MOSCOW, March 10. /TASS/. No one can deprive Russia of the victory in World War II, Russian President Vladimir Putin told TASS in an interview for the project entitled "20 Questions with Vladimir Putin".

"That’s impossible," he said in response to a question. The head of state added that he did not get the feeling that anyone wanted to deprive Russia of the victory.

Putin slammed allegations of the equal responsibility of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin for the start of World War II as "complete garbage."

"There are some ignorant people. They spout all kinds of garbage in the European Parliament about the ‘equal’ responsibility of Hitler and Stalin. Complete garbage!" Putin said, referring to a resolution "on the 80th anniversary of the start of the Second World War and the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe," which was adopted by the European Parliament on September 19, 2019. The document voiced strong criticism of the Soviet leadership, particularly claiming that the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union had triggered World War II. The Russian president earlier branded the European Parliament’s move as the height of cynicism.

Putin also suggested looking "at the chain of events starting around 1918-1919, and at what was going on then" and "who signed what with Hitler." He emphasized that Stalin "never disgraced himself by having direct or face-to-face contact with Hitler" unlike the then prime ministers of the United Kingdom and France and the leader of Poland. The Russian president noted that "they worked with him, with Hitler, held numerous meetings with him, and betrayed Czechoslovakia."

All this information is in the documents, Putin stressed. He pointed to the so-called 1938 Munich Betrayal, when the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia had been handed over to the Third Reich as a result of deals between Hitler and the Western powers. "It was precisely the Munich Betrayal that was the first step to ignite World War II," Putin emphasized.

The Russian leader called on Western countries to honestly say how they feel about contacts between their leaders and Adolf Hitler before World War II instead of hurling baseless accusations against Moscow. "We have condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop secret protocol. Russia has done that. In turn, other countries could also honestly say how they feel about the way their leadership acted back then. Let them honestly open up about it, instead of hurling some fictitious, absolutely baseless accusations and allegations," he told TASS in an interview for the project entitled "20 Questions with Vladimir Putin".

Episode 10 of the video interview is available at https://putin.tass.ru/en.