Poland to demand reparation from Russia for World War II
Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of Poland’s ruling party, Law and Justice, told Bild in an interview that Russia must pay Poland reparation for World War II.
Kaczyński would not specify the possible reparation amount before the special commission has announced its results, DW notes.
However, the Polish politician expressed doubt that during the current generation’s lifetime Moscow will ever admit responsibility for “destroying Poland’s economy, roads, factories, historical buildings and cultural assets”. However, Kaczyński said that Poland’s demands “have no time limit” and that “Russia must pay”.
The leader of the Law and Justice party also accused the Russian president of wanting to rewrite history, shift attention to Poland and conceal his own country’s role “in the start of World War II and its consequences”.
According to Kaczyński, however, the world knows the truth. “It was the Stalin Soviet Union which, on September 17, 1939, attacked Poland. It was Soviet soldiers and NKVD executioners who killed hundreds of thousands of Polish officers in 1940 in Katyn and elsewhere. But Poles as victims and Russians as perpetrators – such a role is not to Putin’s liking,” the politician observed.
At the end of 2019, Poland and Russia entered into a dispute regarding the Soviet Union’s responsibility for WWII.
On December 19, Putin said at a press conference that the Soviet Union did not occupy Poland in September 1939, and instead “sent its troops into a country that was fragmented, and the government was no longer in control of the situation”. Putin also voiced the opinion that Poland was an aggressor itself, when it captured part of Czechoslovakia in 1938.
In response, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that Putin is deliberately trying to slander Poland. He stressed that, at the start of WWII, Russia was an aggressor, and that Stalin was an ally of Hitler.