Puola Suomessa

1. Poland cooperated/collaborated with Hitler’s Germany.

Before World War II, Polish diplomacy tried to keep good neighbourly relations with Germany. Poland’s entering into any sort of military alliance with Hitler was out of question. In the period between the First and Second World Wars, Poland found itself between two aggressive neighbours: Germany and Russia, neither of which practically recognized Polish nation’s right to have an independent state.  In 1934, in Berlin, the German–Polish declaration of non-aggression was signed, which was intended to guarantee the settling of disputes by peaceful means.  Even before that, in 1932, a similar non-aggression pact was signed with the USSR. 

2. Poles forced Hitler to start World War II against them. Why did Poland start the war on 1 September 1939? It was unwilling to cooperate. Hitler had nothing to do but start implementing his plans with Poland.

The Second Polish Republic rejected Hitler’s claims as well as his proposal to enter into a Polish-German alliance against the USSR. It was Hitler’s Germany and the Soviet authorities that signed an agreement against Poland on 23 August 1939 (so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), which allowed Germany to assault Poland on 1 September 1939. Soviet Russia and Hitler’s Germany cooperated in concert until June 1941.

3. Poland fell prey to the policies it had pursued against Czechoslovakia, as under the well-known Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, part of that territory, including western Ukraine, was to be given to Russia.

Poland was neither involved nor a party to the Munich Agreement (September 30, 1938), which heavily limited Czechoslovakia's sovereignty. Polish demands for Trans-Olza (Zaolzie) were made after the Munich Agreement was signed.

4. Thus Russia, which was then named the USSR, regained its historical lands.

The USSR seized the eastern territories of the Second Republic as a result of armed aggression (September 17, 1939) at a time when Poland was fighting the German invasion. It was a stab in the back inflicted on the Polish state. The Soviets rigged the so-called people's referenda in the Polish Borderlands and conducted them in an atmosphere of terror. Lviv and the then provinces of Lviv and Stanisławów (today’s Western Ukraine) have never been a part of the Russian Empire. The Vilnius region was also not historically part of Russia.

5. Ukraine is in fact an artificial state created by Lenin and Stalin.

Today’s Ukraine emerged as a state thanks to Ukrainian national movement. The Bolsheviks did not establish it but merely conquered its part to set up one of the Soviet republics. Ukraine emerged at the will of Ukrainians themselves.

6. The left bank of the Dnieper, including Kyiv, is a historical Russian land.

Kyiv was the historical capital of Ruthenia, and Moscow did not exist at the time. In 1991, Ukraine became an independent state with internationally recognized borders.

7. The idea of Ukrainians as a separate nation emerged in Poland.

The process of self-defining of Ukrainians as a separate ethnic group was paralleled by similar processes in 19th century Europe. Nobody “invented” the Ukrainian nation.

8. NATO bases have been set up on the territory of Ukraine.

There are no NATO bases on the territory of Ukraine.

9. Two coups d’etat were committed in Ukraine to artificially break its ties with Russia.

During the Orange Revolution, the Ukrainian people refused to accept electoral fraud. The organization of another round of voting allowed the election of President Viktor Yushchenko, who actually won a majority of the votes. After the Revolution of Dignity, President Petro Poroshenko won democratically in the presidential elections.

10. In 2014, Moscow was forced to defend Crimea because it was in jeopardy.

There was no threat to Crimea in 2014. The Revolution of Dignity led to a peaceful change of power through democratic elections. Russia’s “little green men” appeared in Crimea to destabilise the situation in Ukraine.