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Disinfo: The pre-war Polish leadership bears all the blame for the tragedy of this country during WWII

Summary

The blame for the tragedy that Poland then suffered lies entirely with the Polish leadership, which had impeded the formation of a military alliance between Britain, France and the Soviet Union and relied on the help from its Western partners, throwing its own people under the steamroller of Hitler’s machine of destruction.

Disproof

This message is part of the Kremlin’s policy of historical revisionism and an attempt to erode the disastrous historical role of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and to reject the historical fact of the Soviet attack at Poland in September 1939. On August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the USSR signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Secret Supplementary Protocol, which divided Poland and other Eastern European countries between these two totalitarian powers. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany attacked Poland and the Soviet Union attack at Poland started on September 17 – in this way, Nazi Germany and the USSR started the implementation of the Secret Supplementary Protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In other words, it was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that put Poland “under the steamroller of Hitler's machine of destruction” during WWII. Read similar examples of the Russian historical revisionism concerning this issue - Signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact thwarted the UK’s expansionist plans in Europe, The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact did not violate the rights of the Polish state, The shift of all blame for WWII outbreak at the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact the best example of manipulation of history.

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Sputnik Poland (Archived)
  • Reported in: Issue 202
  • DATE OF PUBLICATION: 19/06/2020
  • Outlet language(s) Polish
  • Countries and/or Regions discussed in the disinformation: Poland, Germany, Russia
  • Keywords: Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Historical revisionism, USSR, WWII, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Putin, Nazi/Fascist
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Jun 18, 2020
Disproof

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Jun 18, 2020
Disproof

Recurring pro-Kremlin narrative that there is no proof and evidence behind accusations against Russia. Consistent with the narrative on Russophobia. A 40-year-old man, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, was shot dead in a Berlin park just before midday on 23 August 2019. The victim was a Chechen exile who had survived two previous attempts on his life. The Dossier Center, a London-based research group founded by Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, and other investigation groups, such as Bellingcat, identified the suspect as Vadim N. Krasikov, a 49-year-old Russian citizen from Siberia who, according to Bellingcat, used fake identity documents to enter Germany a few days before. The German Foreign Office says Russian officials have not responded sufficiently to repeated requests for information, despite repeated high-level and urgent demands. In addition, the German Federal Foreign Office insisted in a statement that "the Federal Public Prosecutor General has taken over the investigations into this case as there are sufficient grounds to believe that the killing was carried out either on behalf of state authorities of the Russian Federation or of those of the autonomous Chechen Republic as part of the Russian Federation". On December 4th, Germany expelled two Russian diplomats in response to this incident. Germany's federal prosecutor took over the investigation in December 2019. On Thursday, 18 June 2020, almost ten months after the murder, they said they had gathered sufficient evidence and brought charges against the suspect. See similar cases on the Khangoshvili murder here, and similar narratives on Skripal and MH17 cases.