Russian PM Putin in Condemnation of 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact

On the eve of a visit to Poland to mark the 70th anniversary of the German invasion of the country, an act that signaled the beginning of World War Two, Vladimir Putin has condemned the Nazi-Soviet Pact, which was signed shortly before Germany invaded.

Writing in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza Mr Putin, now the Prime Minister of Russia following eight years as its President, has said that there are "good reasons to condemn the pact" that was signed on August 23 1939 by the Soviet Union Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and his German counterpart Joachim von Ribbentrop. As VOA News reports, invading Poland little more than two weeks after the German invasion of September 1, to claim the part of the country allotted to it under the pact, the Soviet Union then went on to annex Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and parts of Romania and Finland. The pact was eventually broken by Hitler in 1941 when he launched his invasion of the Soviet Union, named Operation Barbarossa, a move that in many ways proved to be the German leader's downfall. Besides the pact itself, the massacre in 1940 of thousands of Polish military officers, police officers and civilians by Soviet security personnel at Katyn has made a Polish-Russian reconciliation extremely difficult. That incident, which Mr Putin has acknowledged was a crime, and the 1920 imprisonment of Red Army troops by Poland, has led the Russian Prime Minister to declare:

it is our duty to remove the burden of distrust and prejudice left from the past

Fears that Mr Putin would strike an aggressive tone in what has been dubbed his 'Letter to the Poles' proved unfounded as he said of the challenges facing present-day Europe:

(it is) impossible to create an effective collective security system without the participation of all of the continent's countries, including Russia

One thing Mr Putin did make very clear was that he believed the Soviet Union had little choice but to sign the "non-aggression pact" with Nazi Germany because Western governments' attempts to appease Hitler, typified by the signing of the 1938 Munich Agreement by Britain and France, made the formation of a "common anti-fascist front" virtually impossible. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev expressed not dissimilar sentiments to Mr Putin on Sunday, regarding the necessity of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact from the viewpoint of the Soviet Union, when he said that it was a "flat-out lie" to claim that the Soviets were as much to blame as the Nazis for the Second World War. If the warm response from Gazeta Wyborcza to Mr Putin's words is repeated throughout Poland then the reconciliation between the Russian and Polish nations of which he has spoken may just be possible. And the Russian PM seemed to believe that there is very good reason for hope when he said:

The partnership between Germany and Russia has become an example of meeting each other halfway. I am sure that Russian-Polish relations too will sooner or later achieve this high level of a true partnership