Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski has delivered an unusual history lesson to Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya.
In September 2024, the UN Security Council held a debate on Russian aggression against Ukraine. Nebenzya was among the speakers, repeating familiar lies from Russian state propaganda. He claimed that Ukraine’s authorities were “actively arming themselves and preparing for war with Russia with the help of the United States and its allies.”
“Our country, faced with a sharp increase in Ukrainian attacks on peaceful cities in the Donbas republics, decided to conduct a special military operation,” he lied, while describing Ukraine as an “aggressive, Russophobic, neo-Nazi ‘hornet’s nest’.”
Radosław Sikorski, the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, countered this narrative, finishing his remarks with a pointed reminder: “As an aside, since Ambassador Nebenzia denies Soviet collaboration with the Nazis during the invasion of Poland in 1939, here is a photograph of their joint parade. You will certainly recognise the Soviet uniforms.” He then presented a photograph depicting German and Soviet soldiers from September 1939:
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Joseph Stalin meeting Joachim von Ribbentrop in Moscow on 23 August 1939.
Photo: Bundesarchiv Bild/Wikipedia
In Poland, it is common knowledge that in September 1939 the country was invaded by two aggressors: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which had formed an alliance in August 1939. The pact—signed in Moscow in August 1939 by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and his Soviet counterpart Vyacheslav Molotov—included a secret protocol dividing Eastern Europe into spheres of influence.
“In the event of territorial and political changes in the areas belonging to the Polish state, the spheres of interest of Germany and the USSR shall be delimited approximately along the Narew, Vistula, and San rivers. Whether it is in the interests of both parties to maintain an independent Polish state, and how such a state should be bordered, can be finally determined only in the course of further political developments. In any case, both governments will resolve this matter through friendly agreement.”
Germany attacked Poland on 1 September 1939, and the USSR followed on 17 September. On 22 September, a joint parade of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army was held in Brest-Litovsk (now Brest, Belarus). German General Heinz Guderian and Soviet General Semyon Krivoshein stood together on a podium decorated with swastikas and red stars, saluting the passing troops. After the parade, the Germans withdrew from the city, handing it over to the Soviets in accordance with the agreement:
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Meeting of Soviet and German soldiers on 20 September 1939 near Brest. Photo: Wikipedia/Bundesarchiv Bild
“The ruling circles of Poland bragged about the durability of their state and the strength of their army. Yet a brief strike—first by German troops and then by the Red Army—was enough to leave nothing of this monstrous bastard of the Treaty of Versailles,” said Vyacheslav Molotov a month later.
Let’s not forget that in 1940 the Soviet Union occupied and annexed Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania, and seized territory from Finland after a bloody war.
If Radosław Sikorski were not a Polish minister, but a Soviet citizen, he could face up to five years in prison for his words. This is because his statement contravenes Russian law, specifically Article 354.1 of the Russian Criminal Code, entitled “Rehabilitation of Nazism.”
According to the Article “spreading deliberately false information about the activities of the USSR during the Second World War […] through mass media or information and telecommunications networks, including the Internet” is punishable by a fine or up to five years’ imprisonment.
It is hardly surprising that Russia punishes those who tell the truth about the USSR—a state whose leaders have the blood of millions on their hands, and a state or which Russian President Vladimir Putin longs, believing that: “The collapse of the Soviet Union was not only the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, but also a real tragedy for the Russian people. Millions of our compatriots found themselves outside Russia’s borders, citizens’ savings were devalued, and old ideals were destroyed.”
This is why reminding the world of the USSR’s role in 1939 is not only symbolically or historically important but politically relevant today: modern Russia is not only the legal successor to the Soviet Union but also, in many ways, its ideological heir.
By ih.
Minister Radosław Sikorski delivers speech at the UN Security Council
Madam President,
Excellencies,
The Russian ambassador predicated that this debate will consist of “hackneyed statements dictated by Brussels” – that’s a lie.
I assure you that what you’re about to hear, I wrote myself.
The Russian ambassador claims that Russia does not bomb civilian targets, that’s a second lie.
Two weeks ago I visited the Ukrainian city of Lviv, where a townhouse was hit with a Russian Kalibr missile. A man saw his wife and three daughters taken out of the rubble – dead. All of them were civilians, all of them lived far away from the frontline, and all of them were killed.
Th Russian ambassador has talked about children’s graveyard in Gaza, which is indeed a tragic situation. Well, Ukrainian children are targeted not only with bombs. Thousands have been kidnapped and taken into Russia where they are brainwashed in order to strip them of memories and national identity.
Russia claims these children are orphans left alone in a war-zone. Another lie. Many of them were separated from their parents – either by accident during the attacks, or deliberately by the aggressor’s army.
Independent reports revealed that – and I quote – “officials have deported Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-held territories without consent, lied to them that they weren’t wanted by their parents, used them for propaganda, and given them Russian families and citizenship”.
Special camps offer the abducted children Russian “patriotic education” and a hotline was established to pair the minors with potential “foster families”, luring the latter with money. On top of that Mr. Putin signed a decree fast-tracking the process of granting Russian citizenship to stolen Ukrainian children.
This is not a collateral war damage. It was a plan devised before the war and ruthlessly executed. UN investigators concluded that these actions constitute war crimes.
In October 2022 the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin.
Ambassador Nebenzia and Russian propagandists like to refer to the democratically elected government of Ukraine as Nazis – as you’ve just heard.
It so happens that in Poland I live 3 kilometers from Potulice, the site of a former Nazi filtration camp during the Second World War. It’s known for the fact that thousands of children were imprisoned there – from Poland and the Soviet Union, from around Smoleńsk and Witebsk. Up to 800 of these children died but thousands were transferred west to be Germanized. Blond, blue-eyed – Aryan – children deemed to be racially suitable.
I therefore have a few questions to the Russian ambassador and his superiors:
- How does what you are doing to Ukrainian kidnapped children differ from what German Nazis did to your children and ours?
- How many Russian officials have adopted stolen Ukrainian children following – as reported by the BBC – the example of Sergey Mironov, former Chairman of the Russian Federation Council?
- When will you return the remaining thousands of stolen Ukrainian children back to Ukraine?
- Do you know that stealing another country’s children is tantamount to genocide, as recently affirmed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe?
- Do you remember that diplomats and propagandists of a genocidal regime are also criminals – as Soviet prosecutors argued at Nuremberg with reference to Ribbentrop and Streicher?
Permanent members of the UN Security Council are supposed to be guardians of peace and not to fight their wars with other people’s children. This is Russia’s shame that will not be forgiven or forgotten.
And by the way, since Ambassador Nebenzia denies the reality of Soviet-Nazi collaboration in the invasion of Poland in 1939, here is a picture of their joint parade. I’m sure you recognize the Soviet uniforms.
Thank you very much!
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