MOSCOW, August 17. /TASS/. The statement that Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski made accusing the Soviet Union of "significantly facilitating the launch of World War II," causes Moscow deep regret, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.
She pointed out that it was not the first time that Polish politicians made statements about the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany being equally responsible for the outbreak of the world war. "We have always given clear but delicate responses to that, correcting our Polish counterparts and expressing our concern and our views on this matter," the Russian diplomat said. "We very much regret the fact that while attempting to justify their wish to revise history, they reject the great deeds of the Red Army and its liberating mission in Europe, as high-ranking Polish political figures seem to be ready to use forgery and allow themselves to make insulting remarks," Zakharova noted.
"We believe that when they are not busy making allegations against Russia, some of the Polish officials should brush up some generally known facts," she went on to say. "During the 1930s, the Soviet Union remained a principal opponent of fascism. In the same time period, it was Poland that represented Hitler’s Germany in the League of Nations and rejected France’s proposal to adopt the Eastern Pact. All this led to the Munich Agreement reached in September 1938, allowing your country to seize a part of the carved-up Czechoslovakia," Zakharova said addressing Waszczykowski.
She also noted that in 1938 and 1939, Warsaw refused to let the Soviet troops pass through Poland’s territory, thus aggravating the situation and serious consequences for Europe inevitable. "In the new foreign policy conditions, the Soviet Union found itself face to face with the danger of a two-front war, so it had to accept Berlin’s proposal to make the Non-aggression Pact," the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman said. "Today, attempts to avoid a conflict or somehow delay it are described as evidence proving the Soviet Union’s complicity in Germany’s expansionist plans," she added.
"Perhaps, in such an atmosphere, it is much easier to convince the public that there is the need to take down Soviet war memorials as the so-called traces of the occupation of Poland," Zakharova said. "However, any figments of history will sooner or later boomerang upon those who made them up," she concluded.