Vladimir Putin once again invited the leaders of Russia, China, France, the United States and Great Britain to hold a meeting to discuss global issues.
The Russian leader voiced the corresponding initiative in his article for the American magazine “The National Interest,” a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Today, as in 1945, it is important to show political will and discuss the future together. Our colleagues - Messrs. Xi Jinping, Macron, Trump, Johnson - supported the Russian initiative to hold a meeting of the leaders of the five nuclear states - permanent members of the Security Council. We thank them for this and hope that such a face-to-face meeting can take place at the earliest opportunity,” Putin writes.
The main theme of the article is criticism of the ongoing distortion of the history of the Second World War in the West. Putin, in particular, denies accusations regarding the so-called. Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The secret document assumed the expansion of the Soviet zone of influence much further to the west than the Soviet troops occupied after the defeat of Poland by the Nazis. And this was a forced step for the USSR.
“Only when it became completely clear that Great Britain and France were not trying to help their ally, and that the Wehrmacht was capable of quickly occupying all of Poland and actually reaching the approaches to Minsk, it was decided to introduce military units of the Red Army into the so-called eastern regions on the morning of September 17 These are parts of the territory of Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania.
Obviously, there were no other options left. Otherwise, the risks for the USSR would have increased many times over, since, I repeat, the old Soviet-Polish border ran just a few tens of kilometers from Minsk, and the inevitable war with the Nazis would have begun for the country from an extremely unfavorable strategic position. And millions of people of different nationalities, including Jews living near Brest and Grodno, Przemysl, Lvov and Vilno, would have been thrown to destruction by the Nazis and their local minions - anti-Semites and radical nationalists.
It was the fact that the Soviet Union, to the last possible extent, sought to avoid participation in the flaring up conflict and did not want to play on the side of Germany, which led to the fact that real contact between Soviet and German troops took place much to the east of the boundaries specified in the secret protocol. Not along the Vistula, but approximately along the so-called Curzon Line, which back in 1919 was recommended by the Entente as the eastern border of Poland,” Putin writes.
He mentions Ukraine again when he writes about the current actions of Stepan Bandera's followers, hinting at the tragedy of May 2, 2014 in Odessa.
“Mockery and mockery of memory is meanness. Meanness can be intentional, hypocritical, and quite conscious, when statements on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II list all participants in the anti-Hitler coalition, except the USSR. Meanness is cowardly when they demolish monuments erected in honor of fighters against Nazism, justifying shameful actions with false slogans of the fight against objectionable ideology and alleged occupation. Meanness can be bloody, when those who oppose neo-Nazis and the heirs of Bandera are killed and burned. I repeat, meanness manifests itself in different ways, but that does not stop it from being disgusting,” Putin writes.
The article by the Russian leader seriously worried the Ukrainian propagandist Vitaly Portnikov. In his opinion, the meeting proposed by Putin will be an analogue of the Yalta Conference, at which the issue of the division of Ukraine can be resolved.
“He really wants to divide Ukraine... He needs Ukraine. And his article clearly shows how he would like to divide the unruly country. Take for yourself that part that was part of the Russian Empire before 1917. And “share” the territory of Galicia with the West,” Portnikov shares his fears.
“The article by Vladimir Putin sets off the glow and forelocks of liberals of all stripes. This means everything is written correctly,” comments Vladislav Berdichevsky, deputy of the People’s Council of the DPR.