Polish President Andrzej Duda should be prosecuted for his statement on war reparations from Russia, the chairman of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, said.
In an interview published on Thursday, Duda stated that while Germany started World War II and attacked Poland, Russia “joined this war later on.” Therefore, Warsaw “should demand reparations also from Russia,” the Polish leader claimed.
Volodin accused the Polish president of rehabilitating Nazism and of insulting the memory of those who “gave their lives for the freedom and independence of the Polish people.”
“Russian law provides criminal penalties for such statements. It is right for the supervisory authorities to study the comment of Andrzej Duda and take appropriate measures to bring him to criminal responsibility,” he wrote on Telegram.
Volodin also reminded of the high price the Soviet people paid for the liberation of the world from Nazism – 27 million dead.
“Today Poland exists as a state only thanks to our country,” Volodin said.
Duda’s comments came the day after the lower house of the Polish parliament voted to seek 1.3 trillion euros in compensation from Germany for damages incurred during the Nazi occupation. The German foreign ministry earlier said that it considered the question of wartime reparations “closed.”
Meanwhile, Polish media reported that a ruling-party MP Jaroslaw Krajewski had called to demand 368 hectares from the Czech Republic, in compensation for what Warsaw considers the disadvantageous demarcation of the Polish-Czechoslovak border in the 1950s.