Polish PM says President Putin has often lied about Poland

It usually happens in a situation when the authorities in Moscow feel international pressure caused by its actions. And this pressure is not on the historical stage but on the modern geopolitical scene," Morawiecki underlined in a statement published on Twitter, among others, on Sunday.

Morawiecki added that over the recent weeks Russia suffered several serious failures. He said he was speaking about "the failure of an attempt to fully subordinate Belarus to Russia and about the extension of EU sanctions imposed after the illegal annexation of Crimea."

"The talks in the so called Normandy Format did not end in the lifting of these sanctions. And at the same time, more restrictions were imposed, this time American ones, which significantly hamper the implementation of the Nord Stream 2 project," Morawiecki wrote, recalling that Russian sportsmen had recently been suspended for four years for doping.

"I consider the words of President Putin as an attempt to conceal these problems. The Russian leader is perfectly aware of the fact that his charges do not have anything in common with the truth, and that there are no monuments to Hitler or Stalin in Poland. Such monuments were standing on our soil only when they were erected by aggressors and criminals, namely the Third Reich and Soviet Russia," he said.

Morawiecki added that the Russian nation, which is the greatest victim of Stalin - one of the most cruel criminals in the world's history, deserves the truth. "I deeply believe that the Russian people are a nation of free people, and that they reject Stalinism even if President Putin's authorities try to rehabilitate it," Morawiecki wrote.

"There is no consent to the exchange of executioners with victims, of perpetrators of terrible crimes with innocent residents and attacked countries. In the name of victims and in the name of a common future, we have to take care of the truth," he said. 

Referring to history, PM Morawiecki said that the 20th century brought to the world unimaginable suffering and the death of millions of people "murdered in the name of insane totalitarian ideologies."

"The deadly harvest of Nazism, fascism and communism is obvious for the people of our generation. It is also obvious who is responsible for these crimes - and whose alliance started WWII, which was the deadliest conflict in the history of mankind," the prime minister wrote.

He underlined that it was necessary to speak the truth about WWII, its perpetrators and victims, and come out against all attempts to falsify history because "the more time passes, the less our children know about those times."

The prime minister emphasised that Poland was the first victim of WWII. "Our country was the first to experience the armed aggression of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. And Poland was the first country to fight in the defence of a free Europe."

"The resistance against the powers of evil does not only mean the remembrance of Polish heroism - this is something more important. This resistance is the heritage of the entire and democratic Europe which stood up to fight against two totalitarianisms. Today, when there are people who want to trample the remembrance of these events, Poland must defend the truth. Not in the name of its own interest but in the name of what Europe is," he emphasised.

The Polish PM stressed that the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact signed on August 23, 1939 was not a 'non-aggression pact,' but a political and military alliance dividing Europe into two spheres of influence along the three Polish rivers: Narew, Vistula and San. (The border - PAP) was moved to the Bug River a month later as the result of a Treaty on borders and friendship between the Third Reich and the USSR signed on September 28. It was a prologue to the unimaginable crimes committed over the following years on both sides of this border."

PM Morawiecki went on to say that the Hitler-Stalin alliance came into effect immediately. On September 1, 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, and on September 17, the USSR attacked from the east. 

The prime minister wrote that on September 22, 1939, a great parade took place in Brest on the Bug River to celebrate a common victory of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia over independent Poland. "Such parades are not held by sides in non-aggression pacts, but by allies and friends," he added.

PM Morawiecki stressed that Hitler and Stalin were not only allies but also friends, and that the USSR and the Third Reich "closely cooperated with each other."

According to the Polish prime minister, "without Stalin's co-participation in the partition of Poland and without raw materials delivered to Hitler by Stalin, the German war machine would not have conquered Europe." 

"Thanks to Stalin, Hitler could conquer other countries, imprison Jews from the entire continent in ghettos, and prepare the Holocaust - one of the greatest crimes in the mankind history," he wrote.

The PM recalled that communist crimes started before WWII and said he had in mind the death of millions of Russians from starvation at the beginning of the 1920s, the Holodomor (famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians - PAP), the Great Purge or the Great Terror which cost the lives of nearly 700,000 political opponents and ordinary Russians, and the Polish Operation launched by NKVD secret service to liquidate Soviet citizens of Polish descent.

According to the NKVD data, over 111,000 people were executed during the Polish Operation.

Morawiecki added that the crimes committed after the Soviet aggression against Poland on September 17, 1939, were the continuation of this policy. He recalled the murder of over 22,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, Kharkov, Tver, Kiev and Minsk, in NKVD prisons and gulags. 

But he also stressed that Russian citizens were the greatest victims of communism. According to historians, from 20 to 30 million people were murdered in the Soviet Union, he added. 

The Polish PM underlined that communist leaders led by Stalin were responsible for these crimes. "Attempts made 80 years after the outbreak of WWII to rehabilitate this person for political goals of the incumbent Russian president must arouse the protest of everybody, who has even a fundamental knowledge of 20th century history."

Last Friday at a sitting of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), Putin said the immediate cause of the war was not the August 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but the 1938 Munich Agreement, which secured the cession to Germany of the Sudeten German territory of Czechoslovakia and which Poland attempted to use to secure its claims to the Zaolzie region, over which it was in dispute with Czechoslovakia.

Referring to the Soviets' September 22, 1939, takeover of Brest in then eastern Poland (today's Belarus) from the Germans, who had captured the city several days earlier, Putin stressed that did not mean the Soviets had taken it from Poland, as they were not fighting against Poland at the time and Poland had lost control of the area. He also observed that the Red Army's entry into the region probably helped save many local lives, especially those of Jews, who would have been exterminated by the Germans.

"At that time the Polish government had lost control of those territories, so there was nobody to negotiate with. The Soviet Union did not actually take anything away from Poland," Putin said. 

He also accused Poland's pre-war government of hedging ties to Nazi Germany, by which they "exposed their people, the Polish people, to the German war machine and contributed to the outbreak of World War Two." (PAP)

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