MOSCOW, January 29. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Vladmir Zelensky seeks to smear the mutual history of Ukraine and Russia in a bid to retain his power, Russian State Duma (lower house) Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin opined during his visit to the Moscow Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center.

"Today we observe as the Ukrainian President disowns his grandfather and seeks to do everything to smear our mutual history in a bid to retain power and gain acknowledgement of several European countries and the US," Volodin commented on Zelensky’s words about the beginning of World War II.

According to the politician, the statements made by the presidents of Poland and Ukraine and a number of Baltic states politicians destroy the memory of the war history.

"This is not only sacrilegious, but also unfair towards the memory of their grandfathers and grand-grandfathers, because [the politicians] are now practically disowning them," Volodin claimed.

"This must not happen. The people, we all must understand that those who seek to take away our history, to rewrite it, they seek to take away […] our relatives who died to let us live today," Volodin concluded.

During his visit to Poland, Zelensky lambasted the USSR as complicit in starting World War II. According to the Ukrainian president, Poland and the Polish people were the first to feel the "conspiracy of the totalitarian regimes," which triggered the war and allowed the Nazis to "wind the deadly flywheel of the Holocaust." Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow strictly disagrees with Zelensky’s comment about "USSR being guilty of sparking World War II."