MOSCOW, January 22. /TASS/. Russia did not initiate steps aimed at curtailing cooperation with Poland, including on disputable issues related to history, so measures to remedy the situation should be taken by Warsaw, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday, commenting on Poland’s reaction to new documents on the history of WWII made public in Russia.

"For our part, we would like to recall that we have always favored honest and substantiated discussions of issues related to our history," the ministry noted. "At the same time, it was not Russia that initiated the termination of the bilateral dialogue and the freezing of numerous mechanisms in Russian-Polish cooperation, including on historical topics."

"In view of that, steps to rectify the situation should be initiated by Warsaw, while realizing the need for a depoliticized approach to history based on the truth, hard facts and future-oriented dialogue," the Russian Foreign Ministry stressed.

It pointed to contradictory statements made by Warsaw after these documents had been published. "From the hysterical denial of indisputable facts to assertions that, by doing so, Russia is allegedly showing willingness to revive the work of the bilateral group on complex issues stemming from the history of Russian-Polish relations and the activities of the historians’ commission," the Foreign Ministry noted.

Archival documents

The archival documents on the Warsaw Uprising declassified by the Russian Defense Ministry indicate that, despite limited resources and the fact that troops had been exhausted by heavy fighting, the Red Army command did the best it could to back the Warsaw Uprising by supplying weapons, food, fuel, providing intelligence information and conducting artillery strikes.

According to the Defense Ministry, particular attention in these documents was paid to eyewitness accounts of the savagery and monstrous atrocities committed by the Nazi invaders in the city and its environs.

It highlighted the importance of the documents shedding light on the terrorist activity of the Polish Home Army’s (Armia Krajowa) units in Poland, Belarus and Lithuania in 1944 and 1945. In May 1945, they launched a terror campaign against the Red Army and the local population. Their attacks against Red Army soldiers were recorded in the declassified documents. The Polish Foreign Ministry criticized these documents.