Poland has offered to put the Russian national football team up in a different Warsaw hotel for Euro 2012 because a politically charged march is passing by its chosen residence in the center of the capital on June 10.
A march in memory of the 96 victims of the April 2010 air crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and the country's political and military elite in southern Russia is planned to skirt the walls of the Bristol Hotel in Warsaw, Polish sports minister Joanna Mucha told the Polish TVN24 channel.
The incident corroded Russian-Polish relations as accusations of blame were slung back and forth during a protracted investigation.
"The Russians were offered several alternative places of residence," Mucha said. "Negotiations with the Russian team are continuing. We are trying to convince the team that considering staying in a different place might be in their own interests."
She said she expected a decision in "in the near future."
Anti-Russian sentiment is high among some Poles, leading local police to fear the team's hotel might turn into a target during the march.
Pilot error was named the provisional cause of the crash, which occurred when Kaczynski's Russian-made Tu-154 was attempting to land in heavy fog at an airport near Smolensk.
Kaczynski and his entourage were en route to a memorial service for 20,000 victims of the Katyn massacre, a mass execution of Polish intelligentsia ordered by Soviet authorities in 1940.
At the football tournament, Russia plays Poland in Warsaw on June 12.
