Polish PM furious at Putin rewriting history of second world war
Mateusz Morawiecki attacks Russian president’s ‘lies’ blaming Poland for start of war
Mateusz Morawiecki attacks Russian president’s ‘lies’ blaming Poland for start of war
It is the latest episode in a bitter conflict over historical memory that is likely to intensify as the 75th anniversary of the victory over Nazism approaches next May.
Mateusz Morawiecki issued a four-page statement on Sunday accusing the Russian president of “repeated lies”
Mateusz Morawiecki issued a four-page statement on Sunday accusing the Russian president of “repeated lies”
over the history of the conflict. Earlier, the Polish foreign ministry said Putin’s words resembled “propaganda from the time of Stalinist totalitarianism”.
Morawiecki was responding to a speech by Putin at a summit of heads of former Soviet states in St Petersburg on 20 December. Putin gave the assembled leaders an hour-long history lecture, drawing on a sheaf of archival documents he had brought with him.
The Russian president has also raised the issue at a number of other meetings in recent days, including a gathering of top army generals in which he called Poland’s ambassador to Nazi Germany “a scumbag and an antisemitic pig”.
Morawiecki said Putin was playing with history in order to distract from international pressure over issues such as sanctions and a doping ban for Russian athletes. “I consider president Putin’s words as an attempt to cover up these problems.
The Russian leader is well aware that his accusations have nothing to do with reality.”
The Polish foreign ministry also summoned the Russian ambassador to complain to him about Putin’s comments last week.
Putin is particularly angry about a recent European parliament resolution that said the Soviet Union bore responsibility for starting the second world war, alongside Nazi Germany. That, in turn, came after a concerted effort from the Russian foreign ministry
earlier this year to rehabilitate the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, which 10 years ago Putin had called “pointless, harmful and dangerous”. This year, Russia’s culture minister called it “a triumph of Soviet diplomacy”.
Putin, in his recent speech, insisted that the pact was born of Soviet defensive requirements and only came about after other western powers, including Poland, had signed their own agreements with the Nazis.
Putin pointed to Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 Munich agreement in particular, saying war became inevitable after this point.
The key difference, glossed over by Putin, is that the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact had a secret protocol in which the two powers divided up territory. The Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east two weeks after the Germans attacked from the west.
“Without Stalin’s complicity in the partition of Poland, and without the natural resources that Stalin supplied to Hitler, the Nazi German crime machine would not have taken control of Europe,” wrote Morawiecki in his statement
As the number of surviving veterans continues shrink the politicisation of the war’s legacy is gathering speed across Europe In 🇵🇱, the nationalist ruling Law and Justice party has also been accused of creating an overly simplistic and nationalist version of the country’s history
Donald Tusk, a former prime minister of Poland and a critic of the current government, who until recently was the president of the European council, said Poles should unite to rebut Putin’s claims.
“In view of President Putin’s brazen lies and Russian propaganda, a joint position of the Polish authorities and the opposition is needed. This is not the place and time for an internal dispute,” Tusk wrote on Twitter.
