Polish MFA reacts to Russia's tweet on Soviet "liberating march" in 1939

Russia's Foreign Ministry wrote on Twitter on Friday that "on September 17, 1939, the Red Army began its liberating march into Poland's territory". "The Soviet army reached the Curzon line not letting the Wehrmacht to reach Minsk. The Nations of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine greeted the soviet soldiers with enthusiasm," we read.

Poland's Foreign Ministry spokesman Łukasz Jasina replied to the tweet. "There was no 'liberating march', but aggression carried out in collusion with Nazi Germany. The Republic of Poland did not cease to exist on September 17, 1939," he wrote.

"The inhabitants of the occupied territories were soon to become the victims of crimes committed by the Soviet state," Jasina added.

82 years ago, on September 17, 1939, breaking a Polish-Soviet non-aggression pact, the Red Army entered Poland's territory, carrying out provisions of a Molotov-Ribbentrop pact secret protocol. The alliance between two totalitarian regimes resulted in partition of Poland, left on its own.

Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in a Facebook post on Friday that "the tragic events of September 17, 1939, not only affected Poland". "This day marked the entry of another totalitarian state into a game of powers in our part of Europe," he wrote.

He stressed that "aggressive policy of both countries - Germany and Soviet Union - regarding Poland sparked a conflict unseen in history". "The military theatre expanded onto further countries, coalitions and alliances changed. What didn't change was the suffering of nations, which paid with life and health a price for lack of effective policy of European leaders, who could have stopped totalitarianisms," the prime minister wrote.

"The Polish Nation suffered this inaction in an extreme way. Deportations to Siberia, Katyń, Auschwitz, over 6 million human lives lost. Today, when I look at the situation at Poland's eastern border, I think of Cicero's maxim on history as the teacher of life. And I ask myself: do the others also remember this?" - Morawiecki said.

Later that day, Morawiecki, together with his Lithuanian counterpart Ingrida Šimonytė, laid wreaths at the Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East in Warsaw.