New laws in Poland aimed at removing monuments to Soviet soldiers who contributed to driving Nazi German forces out of the country at the end of WWII have angered Russian parliamentarians. They called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to propose sanctions against Poland.
Russian parliamentarians on July 25 unanimously said they wanted Putin to “demand that the Polish side uncompromisingly meets the terms of a [bilateral] treaty” from 1992 on the mutual protection of memorial sites.
As reported by Radio Poland online, Poland’s ruling conservatives said the deal applies exclusively to war cemeteries, but Moscow says it extends also to symbolic monuments.
Last month, the Polish president signed into law new “de-communisation” rules which ban monuments glorifying totalitarian regimes.
Russian RT news channel cited the Russian senators’ address to Putin. It said: “We are asking you to order federal bodies of executive power to submit their complex proposals on the possible introduction of restrictive measures in bilateral cooperation with the Republic of Poland as well as against Polish lawmakers who initiated the amendments to the April 1, 2016 law that bans the propaganda of communism and other totalitarian regimes, and other persons and companies responsible for it”.
But Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said the president has not made any decisions concerning a possible response to the Polish bill.