Alex Christoforou
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss a TASS interview series with Russian President Vladimir Putin called “20 Questions with Vladimir Putin”.
In episode 10 of the series, Putin is asked what triggered the Great Patriotic War? What does he think about the so-called equal responsibility of Hitler and Stalin?
Putin also sounds off on his relationship with US President Trump, and how he grades the geopolitical cooperation between Russia and the United States.
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Putin Calls EU MPs “ignorant People”, Grades Relationship With Trump C MINUS by The Duran
The Duran Quick Take: Episode 497. The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss a TASS interview series with Russian President Vladimir Putin called “20 Questions with Vladimir Putin”. In episode 10 of the series, Putin is asked what triggered the Great Patriotic War?
Putin also pointed out that, unlike the European Union, Russia has condemned the secret articles in the controversial Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed in 1939 by Moscow and Berlin.
He recalled the tumultuous end of the 1930s in the latest episode of TASS news agency’s 20 Questions to Vladimir Putin, which focused entirely on the wartime period.
The candid talk became intense as Putin unloaded on the notorious 2019 resolution of the European Parliament which claims Molotov-Ribbentrop “paved the way” for the outbreak of the war.
“Some ignorant people,” the president said, are spouting all kinds of “garbage” without mentioning “who signed what with Hitler.”
President Putin stated that the pact – officially known as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the USSR – wasn’t the first of the kind signed back then, as some Western leaders didn’t hesitate to strike deals with Adolf Hitler.
And think what you will about Joseph Stalin, he did try to maintain a distance when dealing with the Fuhrer, the Russian president said.
By the way, Stalin, regardless of what anyone thinks of him (a tyrant or whatever), never disgraced himself by having direct or face-to-face contact with Hitler. What’s more, not a single document was ever signed by both Stalin and Hitler whatsoever.
In contrast, there are documents “signed by Hitler and the British Prime Minister, Hitler and the Prime Minister of France, and also by both Hitler and the leader of Poland.”
They worked with Hitler, “held numerous meetings with him,” and “betrayed Czechoslovakia,” Putin said, referring to the infamous 1938 Franco-British-German deal – also known as the ‘Munich Betrayal’ – under which Hitler annexed neighboring Austria and seized the mainly German-inhabited Sudetenland of sovereign Czechoslovakia.
Meanwhile, Poland had its own designs on the partitioned Czechoslovakia. “The only thing that Hitler told them was: ‘Don’t do it on the same day as us. Let’s not get in each other’s way. We won’t go after what you will: The Tesin Region,'” Putin said, quoting the archives.
Poland coerced Czechoslovakia to give up the region – home to a sizeable Polish population – shortly after the Munich agreement became reality on September 30, 1938. Polish troops and authorities then moved in, effectively occupying the area in October 1938, and the territory was annexed by Poland on October 2.
While EU nations try to shift the blame onto Russia, historic documents paint a different picture, according to President Putin.
Everything is in there. And after that they want to tell us who is to blame. They are the ones who are guilty starting from 1938. It was precisely the Munich Betrayal that was the first step to ignite World War 2.
Russia for its part condemned the secret protocol of the 1939 pact with Germany which, being largely a tactical agreement, bought the Soviet Union a couple more years of relative peace and allowed it to prepare for all-out war with the Third Reich.
The clause in question, which was made public decades after the conflict, concerned the territorial and political reorganization of the Baltic nations, as well as the western parts of Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova, which were historically controlled by Russia.
“We have condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop secret protocol. Russia has done that,” Putin said.
In turn, other countries could also honestly say how they feel about the way their leadership acted back then. Let them honestly open up about it, instead of hurling some fictitious, absolutely baseless accusations and allegations.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Why do Russians feel they must defend the monstrosity that was the Soviet Union?
Why do Americans and the British not identify Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill as the War Criminals that they were?
Growing numbers of us do. IHowever, it’s a fair point and the West needs to recognize how it deliberately killed hundred of thousands of civilians during the war and then deliberately starved to death thousands of prisoners of war – the only argument is over how many. But this is no excuse for defending the Soviet Union which killed millions well before the Nazis got going. Indeed the Nazis might never have come to power if people had not seen what the unfortunately Jewish-dominated Bolshevik leadership did to Russian and Ukrainian peasants, Christians and others. Moreover, it’s a historical fact… Read more »
RIGHT 0N! Those two empirial countries have nothing better to do than accuse others while they, themselves, are lying about facts, hiding therefore their dirty truths, and organizing military and moneytary coups against countries that are getting strong enough to make new friends with nations that the US and the British used to control… It’s called CAPITALISM, a BRITISH INVENTION, WHOSE CONTROL HAS PASSED INTO THE US OF AGGRESSION’S DIRTY AND MURDEROUS HANDS WORLDWIDE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, a requirement whose goal is to change political systems by political manipulation$ in countries with reserves of important sources of oil, rare… Read more »
They are not defending anyone but are defending history not the B.S. put out by those countries that began the war in the first place, as if their skirts were clean.they aren’t.!!!
Apples and Oranges. The issue is what seminal events preceded WWII and how the EU’s American oberkommando is reinventing history to its own purpose, as good toadies do. Stalin needed a buffer and to buy time. That’s what was negotiated. Of course, it was also an opportunity for expansion but since the USSR was in a defensive posture ever since 1917, that was not an illogical desire. Just ask the reformed trotskyist neocons what ideological expansionism beyond national borders means. Irving Kristol was a proud member of the 4th Internationale, so start there. This has nothing to do with whether… Read more »
RE: Putin calls EU MPs “ignorant people.”
That’s a good start. I could think of many more descriptive terms, none of which belong on a polite forum.
Well, let’s say the EU MPs are cowards and underdogs, subserviently kowtowing to Washington, because their EU states are vassal states of the USA.
penrose , Here`s two more descriptions , how about , human traffickers and child sex slaves . Much much more but not on this story .
“By the way, Stalin, regardless of what anyone thinks of him (a tyrant or whatever), never disgraced himself by having direct or face-to-face contact with Hitler. What’s more, not a single document was ever signed by both Stalin and Hitler whatsoever.”
How true, dear President Putin! Well said! And by the way, Generalissimo Stalin also made sure that the Soviet Union won World War II. Russians are thankful to him until this very day.
This recent nonsense of apologising/blaming for past events that happened before those blaming/apologising were even born is utterly self-defeating. We should be concentrating on aggressive wars waged by today’s leaders, rapacious neo-colonialism that is far more damaging than most past colonies, modern slavery etc etc. The reality is that most of our forbears were as powerless as we are, and just as easily misled. Russians can be justly proud of their ancestors’ heroism, but the reality is wars are a racket that is very profitable to a few and brings out the worst in many more. Tragically most western leaders… Read more »
Why is it, Alexander, that you do not ever mention a power that has ALWAYS been stirring trouble between Poland/Ukraine and Russia, (an age-old state of affairs), namely, the Vatican? There is no other explanation for that ancient quarrel, since both countries are Slavs, together with Russia. The foundation of that animosity must be, therefore, religious, and not social or political. What could possibly raise the violence of the Ukrainian mobs and politicians, ever since the country’s independence from the Soviet Union, but the hidden hand of Rome, with a black whisper manipulating the Catholic West and the section of… Read more »
The animosity between Poland and Russia is ancient, it goes back many centuries.
WIKIPEDIA:
Poland–Russia relations have a long but often turbulent history, dating to the late Middle Ages, when the Kingdom of Poland and Kievan Rus’ and later Grand Duchy of Muscovy struggled over control of their borderlands.
Over centuries, there have been several Polish–Russian Wars, with Poland once occupying Moscow and later Russia controlling much of Poland in the 19th as well as in the 20th century, damaging relations.