President Vladimir Putin's government recently angered Poles by telling them to be grateful for the Yalta treaty, the 1945 Allied deal that set the stage for the continent's Cold War division and the consignment of Poland to the Soviet sphere.
Polish and Lithuanian leaders helped mediate an end to Ukraine's presidential election crisis in December -- talks which resulted in the defeat of the Moscow's preferred candidate. To Poles, the struggle mirrored their own efforts in the 1980s to throw off Soviet domination.
Sixty years after what the Russians call "The Great Patriotic War," it's still a highly sensitive issue, said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a foreign affairs magazine. It is "considered a sacred page in our history," he said, and, "every attempt to raise questions about the role of the Soviet Union in this war provokes emotional feelings."
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