Russian President Valdimir Putin, during the public portion of a meeting of the Russian Security Council ostensibly dedicated to Russian-African relations, delivered yet another history lesson yesterday, demonstrating that the roots of today’s crisis, did not begin on Feb. 24, 2022 but rather go back to at least the time period of World War I. “I believe it would be suitable in this context to also remind everyone about several history lessons from the 20th century,” Putin said in response to a briefing to the council on Polish ambitions in western Ukraine that had just been delivered by Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergei Naryshkin. (http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/71714)
Putin noted that the Kiev regime’s offensive has gone nowhere despite the “colossal resources” that Global NATO has pumped into it. He went on to declare that in addition to the depletion of Western resources, Ukrainian manpower is also being depleted and that public opinion in both Ukraine and in Europe is beginning to question the logic of the war. “Both the Europeans and European elites see that support for Ukraine is, in fact, a dead end, an empty, endless waste of money and effort, and in fact, serving someone else’s interests, which are far from European: the interests of the overseas global hegemon, which benefits from the weakening of Europe. The endless prolongation of the Ukrainian conflict is also beneficial to it,” Putin said.
Despite the actual state of affairs, “massive efforts are being taken to stoke the fire of war—including by exploiting the ambitions of certain East European leaders, who have long turned their hatred for Russia and Russophobia into their key export commodity and a tool of their domestic policy,” Putin continued. “And now they want to capitalize on the Ukrainian tragedy.”
“The outlook is clear: in the event Polish forces enter, say, Lvov or other Ukrainian territories, they will stay there, and they will stay there for good,” he said.
And here’s where the history lesson came in. “And we will actually see nothing new,” Putin continued. “Just to remind you, following World War I, after the defeat of Germany and its allies, Polish units occupied Lvov and adjacent territories that had been part of Austria-Hungary. With its actions incited by the West, Poland took advantage of the tragedy of the Civil War in Russia and annexed certain historical Russian provinces. In dire straits, our country had to sign the Treaty of Riga in 1921 and recognise the annexation of its territories.
“Even earlier, back in 1920, Poland captured part of Lithuania—the Vilnius region, a territory surrounding the present-day Vilnius. So they claimed that they fought together with the Lithuanians against so-called Russian imperialism, but then immediately snatched a piece of land from their neighbor as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
