Putin: Europe trying to shift WW2’s blame from Nazis to Communists

Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin said last week that Europe is now trying to shift the blame for World War II from the Nazis to Communists, reports Notes From Poland.

Putin was speaking at an informal summit of past Soviet states in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg on Friday, December 20.

The Russian president made the remark after condemning a recent European Parliament resolution that put the blame for the unleashing of the war on the 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, which was a non-aggression treaty between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

The European Parliament resolution on the 80th anniversary of the start of the Second World War and the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe “stresses that the Second World War, the most devastating war in Europe’s history, was caused by the notorious Nazi-Soviet Treaty of Non-Aggression of 23 August 1939, also called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and its secret protocols, which allowed two totalitarian regimes that shared the goal of world conquest to divide Europe into two zones of influence.”

The parliament adopted the resolution by 535 votes to 66, with 52 abstentions.

Notes From Poland reports that Putin said that other countries, such as Poland, France and Britain, had earlier signed agreements with Germany in an effort to appease Hitler, and that his country was the last one to sign such a pact with Nazi Germany.

According to a transcript of Putin’s speech on the official website of the president of Russia, the Russian president also mentions “the treaty between the Republic of Lithuania and the German Reich,” which was “signed on March 22, 1939 in Berlin by the foreign minister of Lithuania and Ribbentop to the effect that Klaipeda Territory will reunite with the German Reich,” and “the Nonaggression Treaty between the German Reich and Latvia of June 7, 1939.”

The summit was attended by, in addition to Putin himself, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, Armenia Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, First Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kyrgyzstan President Sooronbay Jeenbekov, Moldova President Igor Dodon, Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon and Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov.

Image via Kremlin.ru under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) (Original image)