Attempts to distort history that the Kremlin pursues, including through Putin’s propaganda article on Ukraine, are “doomed because they are not based on the truth.”
This opinion was expressed by Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz who spoke with Radio Poland to comment on the historic signing in Vilnius by the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania of a declaration, which directly appeals to the common historical past of the three states, and the signing of the Lublin Road Map triangle, Censor.net reports.
The Polish foreign ministry official stressed that the so-called “memory dispute” between the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other, hasn’t gone anywhere.
“An example of this was the immediate reaction of Vladimir Putin, who in his article immediately after our declaration sought to show that Ukrainians are in fact Russians, or ‘Little Russians,’ as today’s ideology pundits in Moscow seek to present it. So the controversy will prevail, but it seems to me that history cannot be completely distorted, it cannot be changed by any attempts at misinterpretation that Moscow is trying to make. They are doomed to failure because they aren’t based on truth,” said Martin Pszydacz.
The Deputy Foreign Minister of Poland reminded that for the last 200 years these countries and peoples have been under Russian occupation. In addition, official Moscow, during the Soviet era, also “tried to show the separation of the peoples of Eastern Europe from the culture of Western Europe and to establish the predominance of Russian culture.”
At the same time, Pszydacz recalled how Lithuania in the 1990s and Ukraine “during the previous governments tried to base their policies on a separate national identity.”
“I think they are at a slightly different stage now; by further affirming own individuality, they can afford to turn to a history that unites us without resentment, sometimes anti-Polish, which was in place in Lithuania in the 1990s and in Ukraine in the 2000s,” he said.
The politician is convinced that today Ukraine and Lithuania are aware of and are beginning to discover the huge potential contained in the common history of all three states. This history, according to Pszydacz, has plenty of examples of tolerance, cooperation, democracy, and today, Kyiv, Vilnius, and Warsaw have a unique opportunity to build a successful future together.
