THE DIGNITY OF CEREMONIES TO MARK THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OUTBREAK OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN POLAND IS BEING MARRED BY FURIOUS SPATS BETWEEN RUSSIA AND 4 EASTERN EUROPEAN STATES OVER THEIR RESPECTIVE WARTIME ROLES.
Russian media has aired a string of accusations against Poland, claiming that Warsaw intended to collaborate with Hitler in an invasion of the Soviet Union, and that Jozef Beck, Poland's foreign minister in 1939, was a German agent.
Moscow broadcasters have also claimed that there was a "German hand" in the 1940 Katyn massacre of thousands of Polish PoWs, an atrocity generally held to have been the exclusive work of Stalin's secret police.
On the morning, 4:45 am, of September 1, 1939, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein ushered in WWII when it opened fire on the 180-strong Polish contingent stationed on Westerplatte
contentious Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, signed between Stalin and Hitler in August 1939. A pact of mutual non-aggression that lasted until 1941, it allowed Russia to invade and annexe Eastern Poland.
Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president, also labelled attempts in the Baltic states, which were also invaded under the pact's terms, to equate Hitler with Stalin as a "cynical lie".
An open letter yesterday from Mr Putin, in which he appeared to strike a more conciliatory note.
"Our duty is to remove the burden of distrust and prejudice left from the past in Polish-Russian relations," wrote Mr Putin, who went on to describe the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact as "immoral", and also thanked Poland "from the bottom of my heart" for the 600,000 Poles who fought on the Eastern Front under Red Army command.
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