The Polish MFA invited the Russian ambassador to explain that the Russian president has repeatedly blamed Poland for the outbreak of World War II in recent days.
The Polish state news agency PAP reported that Ambassador Sergej Andreyev was "urgently" summoned to the Ministry in Warsaw.
He was told that Polish authorities are strongly opposed to the recent "historical insinuation" by Putin and other Russian officials, Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Pzidač said.
Pžidač said that Poland considers the views of Putin and others to be a "Stalinist historical narrative" and "propaganda of a totalitarian state." Those views are "a mockery of the millions of victims of Stalinist totalitarianism, whose victim was also the Russian people," said Pžidač.
It is the latest dispute between two neighboring countries over the memory of the Second World War. Poles remember that they were attacked by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at the beginning of that conflict in which six million Poles died.
Warsaw considers both powers to be aggressors who have caused suffering and death. Russia has been focusing on Soviet casualties since Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, which brought the Soviets into the war on the side of the Allies.
About 27 million Soviet citizens died in the fight to free Europe from Nazi terror. In recent days, Putin has been criticizing the resolution of the European Parliament, which says that the Soviet Union is also responsible for the Second World War. Putin called it "pure nonsense." The war began a few days after Adolf Hitler and Soviet dictator Josif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili - "Stalin" agreed to partition Poland and the Baltic states based on the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed on August 23, 1939.
Putin wrote off the significance of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as a move the Soviet Union was forced to take because some other European countries had signed non-aggression pacts with Hitler.
He cited the 1938 agreement between Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy that allowed Hitler to annex Czechoslovakia as an example of the alleged "conspiracy" of Western leaders with Hitler. Putin also cited archival documents that he claims show that Poland's ambassador to Berlin praised Hitler's plans to rid Europe of Jews.
In an outburst of anger, Putin called the ambassador "scum" and "anti-Semitic pig".
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