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Polish president accuses Putin of ‘post-Stalinist revisionism’

07.01.2020 16:57
Polish President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday accused Russian leader Vladimir Putin of “post-Stalinist revisionism” and of trying to shift the blame for the outbreak of World War II onto Poland.
President Andrzej Duda
President Andrzej Duda Photo: PAP/Radek Pietruszka

Duda’s comments, which follow remarks by Putin that have caused anger in Poland, came at a special meeting known as a Cabinet Council with members of the Polish government at the presidential palace in Warsaw.

Duda has previously indicated he may skip a conference in Israel marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz German Nazi death camp if he is not allowed to speak alongside Putin and other leaders.

On Tuesday, Duda accused Putin and other Russian politicians of “a kind of post-Stalinist revisionism.”

The Polish president lambasted them for “trying to shift responsibility for triggering World War II onto Poland.”

And he condemned comments which suggested "that Poles are also responsible for the extermination of Jews.”

Putin recently reportedly suggested that Poland was partly responsible for the outbreak of World War II and claimed that the Soviet Union helped “save lives” after it invaded Poland in 1939 following a pact with Nazi Germany.

Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk last month called the statements a "dangerous narrative campaign" against Poland.

Meanwhile, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński told public broadcaster Polish Radio on Tuesday that it was “unacceptable” for Duda not to be allowed to deliver a speech at the World Holocaust Forum, which is scheduled to take place on January 22-23 at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.

“It is unacceptable, at a conference dedicated to the Holocaust, for Vladimir Putin to be one of key speakers and for Poland's president not to be able to speak,” Jabłoński said.

On Sunday, Duda said that it was a “necessary condition for me, as the president of Poland, to be able to speak alongside other presidents” in order to present the “historical truth, which, unfortunately, has been falsified recently.”

The World Holocaust Forum is scheduled to be attended by leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and the presidents of Austria, Germany and Italy.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp operated in German-occupied southern Poland between May 1940 and January 1945.

It was the largest of the German Nazi concentration and death camps.

More than 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews, as well as Poles, Roma, Soviet POWs and people of many other nationalities, perished at the camp.

(pk)

Source: PAP