MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin shares the opinion of Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky that there was a point in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact for Soviet security.
“There was a point in this pact for providing Soviet security. That is the first thing,” the president told a press conference after meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“Secondly: I will recall that after the relevant Munich agreement was signed, Poland itself took steps aimed at annexing part of the Czech territory. It turned out that after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the division of Poland, it itself fell victim to the policy it had tried to pursue in Europe,” Putin said.
The USSR made a host of efforts to create conditions for collective standoff to Nazism and made “numerous attempts to create an anti-fascist bloc in Europe,” he said.
“All these attempts failed,” Putin said.
After the 1938 agreements in Munich, some politicians believed a war was inevitable, the president added.
“And when the USSR realized that it was being left one on one with Hitlerite Germany it made steps to prevent direct collision. And so this pact was signed. And in this sense, I share the opinion of our culture minister that this pact did make sense for providing security of the Soviet Union,” Putin
The president commented on the fears raised in Poland and the Baltic States following the remarks made be Medinsky who called the pact a colossal achievement of Stalin’s diplomacy from the viewpoint of Soviet interests.
“With regard to the getting rid of fears. This is also an internal state of those who are afraid. They still need to get over this, make a step forward instead of living with the phobias of the past, and look into the future,” Putin said.
For her part, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said about the pact that “it was done on a parity basis.” “Of course, the Second World War emanated from National-Socialist Germany, and we, Germany, are bearing historical responsibility for that,” she said.
“We will always remember that it was through our fault that millions of people lost their lives, and that the Red Army played the decisive role in liberating Germany,” she said.
