In an unprecedented speech to senior Defense Ministry officials, Russian President attacked Poland and EU • Condemned Polish ambassador to Germany at the time: "Antisemitic pig"

• Putin during his speech at the Ministry of Defense // Photo: AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin strongly criticized the Poles' conduct during World War II on Tuesday, saying they cooperated with the Nazis and held anti-Semitic positions during the war.

During a speech at an event this year at the Moscow Ministry of Defense, the president said: "In essence, the Poles have cooperated with Hitler.

Unusually, the Russian president used harsh language, Putin accused that during the war, the Polish ambassador to Germany promised to place a statue of Hitler in Warsaw and send the Jews of his country to Africa. "He was a bastard, an anti-Semitic pig. There is no other way to describe him."

Photo: Reuters

"He expressed full support for Hitler and his anti-Semitic views," Putin concluded. The president went on to say that Poland is now trying to rewrite history and erase the memory of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.

"These are people like those who carried and gave with Hitler, such people today are destroying monuments in memory of the heroes who liberated them from Germany, the Red Army soldiers who liberated Europe and its people from the Nazis," the Russian president boasted.

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Putin attacked the EU condemning the crimes of the Stalin regime, saying they did not endeavor to condemn similarly the Nazi crimes. "It is a mistake to compare the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany. It is complete nonsense," he said.

On the military level, Putin has argued that Russia has succeeded in getting to the point where the West is trying to keep track of the Russian military's technological progress. "This is a unique historical situation, for the first time the West is trying to get us," he added.