Poland Greatly Indebted to Russia, Not Other Way Around - Russian Ambassador

OSWIECIM (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th January, 2020) Poland owes Russia an enormous debt as the mere fact that it exists today is only thanks to the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in the World War II, Russian Ambassador to Poland Sergey Andreev said on Monday at the commemorative ceremony for the 75th anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp's liberation.

The Polish government has repeatedly voiced an idea that Russia on par with Germany has to pay Poland reparations for the damage that the Eastern European country had suffered during the second world war.

"We have our own viewpoint in this regard. Poland exists today thanks to the Soviet Union's victory in World War II. If it were not for this victory, neither Poland nor the Polish people would be on this soil. Everyone knows what destiny the Third Reich leaders were planning for this country and its people," Andreev told journalists, adding that "speaking of debts, it is Poland who owes Russia and other former Soviet republics a debt that cannot be paid."

According to the Russian diplomat, attempts to revise the results of World War II are not something new and the forthcoming 75th anniversary of the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 will be a good occasion to remind the world whose contribution was the one to determine the defeat of fascism and the subsequent restoration of the world order.

"Clearly, it does not fit the current viewpoint of our Western partners ... on what today's world should be like," Andreev said.

German reparations is a long-standing item on Poland's foreign political agenda. While Warsaw expects more tranches from Germany to compensate for the war-time damages, Berlin claims to have already payed enough and cites Poland's decision to drop demands of reparations back in 1953.

Moscow, too, denies that Warsaw has any legitimate right to demand reparations. For some time after the Potsdam conference in 1945, Poland had been getting a portion of reparations that then Eastern Germany was paying to the Soviet Union. Since 1954, the payments from Germany were discontinued as per a bilateral Soviet-Polish treaty.