Astonishingly, their declaration accused Poland of being at “war with its own history”:

This makes perfect sense … if Russia forgets the history leading up to the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union’s lines in June 1941 in Operation Barbarossa, which were in the middle of Poland. And why were Soviet troops in Poland in June 1941? Because Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler had agreed two years earlier to carve up Poland between them in the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop “Non-Aggression” Pact, and turn the Poles into Nazi and Soviet slaves — and worse. Coincidentally, RealClearHistory marked the 78th anniversary of this despicable act earlier this week:

Less than a month later, Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east after Nazi troops had invaded from the west. That pact not only sealed Poland’s fate for decades, but also that of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and that of Finland for a much shorter period. Had the Soviets not signed that pact, World War II might never have happened at all — which does not let Britain or France off the hook for their own failures, including their serial refusals to enforce the Versailles treaty and the failure to make an alliance with Stalin while they still could.

It’s true that the Soviet army pushed the Nazis out of Poland eventually, but it’s equally true that the Soviet army had earlier helped the Nazis wipe Poland off the political map. And after the Nazis got pushed out, the Soviets occupied Poland themselves as well as the Baltic states and kept them under Moscow’s thumb for 45 more years. Only when the Soviet Union finally collapsed under its own imperial ambitions and contradictions did the Poles finally taste liberation, and only in the form of Russian soldiers getting the hell out of Poland.