Putin accuses Poland of colluding with Hitler in the Second World War

Vladimir Putin has accused Poland of being antisemitic and colluding with Adolf Hitler, in response to a European resolution that partly blames the Soviet Union for the Second World War.

The Russian president dismissed as “sheer nonsense” a recent European Parliament resolution that blamed the Soviet Union’s 1939 nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany for the outbreak of the war days later.

Mr Putin, in a meeting with his top military brass, suggested the Soviet Union was forced into the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty after other European nations signed nonaggression agreements with Hitler.

He instead pointed to the 1938 Munich Agreement, which allowed Hitler to annex Czechoslovakia. He said this was an example of western “collusion” with the Nazi leader.

The criticism is the latest in a series of attacks in which the Russian leader has furiously rejected the west’s characterisation of the Soviet treaty with Nazi Germany. The agreement saw the Soviets invade Poland from the east two weeks after Germany invaded on 1 September, 1939.

Hitler and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin then carved up Poland and the Baltic states based on a secret protocol in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.

But Mr Putin claimed western countries colluded with Hitler, citing archive documents he claimed showed the Polish ambassador to Berlin praising Hitler’s plans to deport Jews from Europe.

In an angry outburst, he called the ambassador “scum” and an “antisemitic swine”.

“He expressed full solidarity with Hitler in his antisemitic views,” he added.

On Friday, similar comments made by Mr Putin prompted Poland to accuse the Russian president of echoing Soviet propaganda.

Warsaw expressed “concern and disbelief” over the Russian leader’s remarks.

The EU resolution Mr Putin was criticising stated that the 1939 pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany “paved the way for the outbreak” of the Second World War.

It said the pact set out to divide Europe “between the two totalitarian regimes” of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

Many historians have dismissed suggestions that Poland was to blame for Hitler’s invasion and consider the country to be one of the major victims of the Second World War.

Speaking to The Guardian after Mr Putin made similar remarks in August, Slawomir Debski, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, said: “Putin is saying that annexation of the Baltic states, aggression on Poland, aggression on Romania, on Finland, all of this was not a big deal, a natural part of history, and that is a problem.

“We should ask ourselves why we commemorate all these historical events. Not because these politicians are historians. We do it to send a message to our contemporary society about what is right, and what is wrong.”

Additional reporting by Associated Press

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