Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sought to calm Russian disputes with Poland over World War II yesterday, condemning the Nazi-Soviet pact and expressing sorrow over a Soviet massacre of Poles.
Putin described the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact as “immoral.” He also acknowledged that the massacre of 22,000 Polish officers, intellectuals and others by the Red Army at Katyn forest had been the subject of heavy emotion in Poland.
“Our duty is to remove the burden of distrust and prejudice left from the past in Polish-Russian relations,” Putin said in an article he penned for the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, a copy of which was published on the government Web site Monday. “Our duty ... is to turn the page and start to write a new one.”
His comments came as he was expected in Gdansk, Poland, of today to attend major ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland that sparked World War II.
But the visit comes amid severe tensions between Warsaw and Moscow over their shared history, most notably over the August 1939 pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that carved up Poland and the Baltic States ahead of the War.
Russia in recent months has stepped up its campaign against what it calls “falsifications” that challenge Soviet heroism in World War II, which cost the lives of tens of millions of Soviet citizens.
The main targets of Russia’s criticism have been governments of ex-communist states such as Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics, which view the Soviet Union as an aggressor and occupier, not a liberator.
“Without any doubt, it is possible to condemn — and with good reason — the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact concluded in August 1939,” wrote Putin, referring to the two foreign ministers who signed the pact in the Kremlin.
“In our country, the immoral character of the pact was given an unequivocal evaluation by our parliament,” he added in apparent reference to a 1989 condemnation of the pact by the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies.
But he added that the Soviet Union had been pushed to sign the pact by the earlier 1938 Munich agreement signed by Britain, France and Italy with Adolf Hitler that had “destroyed all hope of the creation of an united front in the struggle against Fascism.”
Less than four weeks after the August 1939 pact was signed Soviet troops invaded and occupied eastern parts of Poland.
In 1940 Soviet secret police massacred 22,000 Polish officers, intellectuals and others at Katyn forest in western Russia, a massacre Moscow for decades blamed on the Nazis.
“The Russian people, whose destiny was distorted by a totalitarian regime, also understand all too well the acute emotions of Poles in connection with Katyn, where thousand Polish officers died,” Putin wrote.
“We must together preserve the memory of the victims of this crime,” he wrote.
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