Russian Ambassador to Warsaw Sergey Andreyev was summoned to the Polish Foreign Ministry on July 22 because of Vladimir Putin’s words that Poland received “significant lands” in the West thanks to Stalin. This was reported by the country’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in his Twitter feed.
“Kommersant” quoted Andreev as saying that the Polish Foreign Ministry “received a proper rebuff”, as well as clarifications about how Russia sees “both the history of the twentieth century and the behavior of the Polish authorities now” in connection with the military actions in Ukraine.
TASS gave the following quote from Andreev: “We have recorded a complete lack of mutual understanding and completely different approaches to both issues of contemporary politics and history. And there is nothing to add here”. The ambassador, clarifying that the note was not handed to him, “limited to verbal expressions of displeasure”.
It should be noted that Vladimir Putin on July 21, at a meeting of the Security Council called the western territories of present-day Poland “Joseph Stalin’s gift to the Poles”. In the Russian president’s opinion, the Polish authorities “expect to form a coalition under the NATO umbrella, intervene in the military conflict” in Ukraine and “get a bigger piece”, i.e. “get a part of land in Belarus”.
Forbes.Ru quoted Putin as saying: “It was thanks to the Soviet Union, thanks to Stalin’s position that Poland received significant lands in the West, lands of Germany. That’s exactly right, the western territories of present-day Poland are Stalin’s gift to the Poles”. Putin also suggested that Polish authorities might intervene “in the conflict” in Ukraine to then occupy territories in the west of the country. This is how Putin commented on reports about plans to create a “Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian connection”.
