The comments were the latest salvo in a war of words between Poland and Russia over World War II history in which top Polish leaders have accused Moscow of lying.
Speaking to reporters 75 years after the Soviets entered the Polish capital towards the end of WWII, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński hit out at what he said were Russian attempts to twist historical facts.
"On January 17, 1945, the Red Army entered a Warsaw left ruined after the Warsaw Uprising [of 1944], during which the Red Army stood and watched from the other bank of the Vistula River as Warsaw was being destroyed,” Jabłoński said.
“This was not liberation, it was bringing in new communist slavery, and we must remember that, while of course respecting individual soldiers."
Jabłoński was asked about the publication of documents by the Russian defence ministry of regarding the entry of the Red Army into Polish capital on January 17, 1945, according to which Poles murdered Jews and Ukrainians in Warsaw.
Jabłoński said that was "another attempt to falsify history."
He added: "Today’s Russia is trying very hard to falsify, manipulate the truth about the course of World War II, about the role of the Soviet Union… We unequivocally condemn this and basically the entire civilized world condemns it.”
Russian President Putin recently suggested that Poland was partly responsible for the outbreak of World War II.
Polish President Andrzej Duda accused the Russian leader of “post-Stalinist revisionism.”
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that Putin “has lied about Poland on numerous occasions, and he has always done it deliberately.”
(pk)
Source: PAP