In an interview aired by private broadcaster TVN24 on Friday evening, Russian ambassador to Poland Sergey Andreyev said Poland was partly responsible for Nazi Germany invading in 1939 because it had repeatedly blocked the formation of a coalition against Berlin in the run-up to the conflict.
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Poland and Russian Federation have often clashed over different interpretations of the Second World War, which began in September 1939 after Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin partitioned Poland between them.
Polish officials say a claim by the Russian ambassador that Warsaw was partly to blame for World War II has damaged bilateral relations.
“The role of an ambassador accredited in a country should be to build harmony and friendly relations between countries”, Kopacz said.
Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna said that he would summon the Russian ambassador on Monday.
The former Soviet Bloc country has been attracting Moscow’s displeasure for years by moving closer to the West, as seen in its membership of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union.
Asked about the Russian ambassador’s comments, Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz replied: “Even children in Poland know that neither Ribbentrop nor Molotov were Polish” – a reference to the secret pact between the German and Soviet foreign ministers that set the war in motion by carving Poland and the Baltic states up between them. But tensions have been especially high since Russian Federation annexed Crimea in 2014, a step that Warsaw has strongly condemned. Hundreds of thousands of Poles have been killed within the war.
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Family members look at coffins during the first burials of World War II heroes who were later secretly slain by the communists, at the Powazki cemetery in Warsaw, Poland, Sunday, September 27, 2015. We appear to be far more interested in not trying to provoke Putin than we are in protecting eastern Europe.
