Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has repudiated the Motolov-von Ribbentropp Pact:
MOSCOW — Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, has published a lengthy article characterizing the Nazi-Soviet pact to divide Poland at the outset of World War II in 1939 as immoral, but he stressed that it was just one of a series of such deals that countries struck with the Nazis at that time.
Mr. Putin called the nonaggression pact, which included secret amendments defining spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, “analogous” to the agreement by Britain and France a year earlier at Munich to accede to the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.
The prime minister released his historical interpretation Monday before leaving for Poland to attend a commemoration Tuesday of the start of World War II, 70 years ago this week.
In advance of the memorial ceremonies — which will bring together 20 European leaders including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany — Mr. Putin met Tuesday morning with the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, in a discussion dominated by trade and energy issues.
“Though we do differ on various different things we can work together,” Mr. Tusk said in a news conference to announce the signing of a cooperation agreement between the two countries on trade and energy. He noted, however, that the countries need “to try and find the truth of what happened.”
The pact — which was followed by German and Soviet invasions of Poland — remains a source of anger there, and the article heightened expectations of what Mr. Putin would say during his visit to the nation where Russia is a major trading partner after Germany. At the news conference, Mr. Putin did not make any apologies for the past although he did say that “Yes we have some problems in our history, which we must carefully discuss, carefully analyze.”
“Russia and Poland,” Mr. Putin said, will “do their utmost to build a relationship on the basis of pragmatism and mutual respect.”
Yea, let’s just forget about that whole invasion followed by 35 years of oppression thing.
