POLAND is to summon Russia's envoy after he said Warsaw was partly to blame for the outbreak of World War Two, continuing a spat which has seen the Polish ambassador in Moscow summoned twice in just over a week.
Relations between the two countries have been extremely fragile due to Russia's support for separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine. Warsaw has been one of the most vocal critics of Russia's actions - which Moscow denies - and a strong proponent of upholding economic sanctions against it.
In an interview aired by private broadcaster TVN24 on Friday evening, Russian ambassador to Poland Sergey Andreyev said Poland was partly responsible for Nazi Germany invading in 1939 because it had repeatedly blocked the formation of a coalition against Berlin in the run-up to the conflict.
Andreyev also said Polish-Russian relations were currently at their worst since 1945 because Poland had chosen to freeze political and cultural contacts.
"The Russian ambassador will be summoned to the foreign ministry on Monday so that this issue is clarified to him by a foreign ministry representative" Schetyna told reporters.
Earlier on Saturday, the Polish foreign ministry issued a statement expressing "surprise and concern" over Andreyev's remarks.
"The narrative presented by the highest official representative of the Russian state in Poland undermines historical truth and refers to the most mendacious interpretation of events, familiar from Stalinist and Communist times," it said.
Hours before the interview with Andreyev was aired, Moscow had summoned Poland's ambassador to Russia, Katarzyna Pelczynska-Nalecz after gravestones were vandalised in a Soviet cemetery in a Polish town 20 kilometres from the Belarusian border.
Fifty-seven graves were discovered vandalised on Wednesday at a cemetery in Milejczyce in north-eastern Poland where 1,615 Russian soldiers are buried.
The Polish foreign ministry condemned the incident on Friday, and police and a government council are investigating.
A Reuters cameraman at the cemetery on Saturday said most of the graves, each containing several dozen soldiers, had been damaged, with shattered red stone Soviet stars and wreaths with Polish writing on them scattered across the ground.
A number of Poles had come to the graveyard to clear up, including one 60-year-old man who gave his name as Wlodzimierz.
"These young boys were fighting not for their homeland, they were fighting for Poland, they were freeing this place, and they died here in this region. And now to come and do something like this? I've been coming here for two days, and when I look at it I'm shaking," Wlodzimierz said.
A week before the incident at the graveyard a Soviet-era statue was removed in another Polish town, which also led to the Polish ambassador being summoned by Russia's foreign ministry.
"One gets the impression that the desecration of our memorial places has been raised in Poland to the rank of a state policy," the Russian ministry said in a statement demanding exhaustive measures to find and bring the vandals to justice. (Reporting by Wiktor Szary; Additional reporting by Karol Witenberg; Editing by Dominic Evans and Hugh Lawson)
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here