The comment prompted Poland’s Foreign Ministry to declare Saturday that the ambassador “undermines historical truth” and seems to be trying to justify Stalinist crimes.
Advertisement
Sergei Andreev accused Poland – which lost the highest proportion of its population in the conflict – of “blocking the creation of an anti-Nazi coalition” which made it “co-responsible for World War II”.
Andreyev also said Polish-Russian relations were now at their worst since 1945 because Poland had chosen to freeze political and cultural contacts.
Hours before the interview with Andreyev was aired, Moscow had summoned Poland’s ambassador to Russian Federation, Katarzyna Pelczynska-Nalecz after gravestones were vandalised in a Soviet cemetery in a Polish town 20 kilometres from the Belarusian border.
“Therefore Poland partly bears responsibility for the catastrophe that ensued in September 1939”, he said, referring to the Nazi invasion of Poland.
Poland’s Foreign Ministry expressed “surprise and alarm” at the comments, and Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna summoned Andreev for a meeting on Monday.
The ministry said in a statement on its website that it demanded that exhaustive measures were taken to find and bring the vandals to justice.
“The role of an ambassador accredited in a country should be to build to build harmony and friendly relations between countries”, Kopacz said.
Moscow has repeatedly protested against the demolition of Soviet monuments in Poland in recent months. But tensions have been especially high since Russian Federation annexed Crimea in 2014, a step that Warsaw has strongly condemned.
Advertisement
Several hundred thousand Poles considered “enemies of the people” were also transported to Soviet prison and work camps, with many perishing alongside imprisoned Polish soldiers from cold, hunger and overwork.
