“I did not understand the essence of the issue”: Macron accused Russia of trying to “interpret the Second World War”

French President Emmanuel Macron said he is observing "Russia's approach to reinterpret World War II." The French leader said this during a speech to students of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.

In his speech, he said that he saw the risk of “distorting historical memory”, mentioning several states, including Russia.

“I sometimes see Polish attempts to erase 1989 and this history of freedom. I see a deliberate Hungarian policy to review the entire history of the XX century. I see Russia's approach to reinterpret the Second World War and make the Polish people guilty. I see the risk of fragmentation of our memory in the revision of history, ”said Macron.

Pour votre génération, bâtissons une mémoire européenne partagée. pic.twitter.com/Xr9LWcnfBM

Commenting on the statement of the French leader, a member of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, Crimean Senator Sergei Tsekov expressed the opinion that they want to see a different interpretation of the events of the Second World War in Poland.

The senator drew attention to the statements of the Polish leadership about the actions of the USSR shortly before the war.

“We need to pay attention to the position of the Polish leadership, that they want to see a different situation in the Second World War and blame the USSR for almost unleashing it,” Tsekov said.

He noted that representatives of European countries should pay attention to their own policies during the war period.

“They want to blame themselves for starting the Second World War and find other perpetrators besides Germany. As usual, they ... transfer this blame to Russia, ”the senator emphasized.

The deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on international affairs, Aleksey Chepa, in an interview with RT suggested that the French president did not understand the issue well enough.

“I think that Macron did not understand the essence of the issue, in understanding what we say (Russia. - RT ) on this topic. We do not blame anyone, we are talking about undeniable historical facts, ”Chepa said.

The deputy advised to turn to historical primary sources to all who offer alternative interpretations of the facts of history.

“We adhere to only historical facts in our speeches, if someone does not like these historical facts or someone thinks that these facts should be interpreted differently, let them refer to the primary sources,” the deputy added.

Disinformation campaign

Earlier, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned of Poland’s imminent large-scale disinformation campaign against Moscow on the theme of World War II.

As Zakharova said during a January 23 briefing, a number of representatives of the Polish political elite chose a historical theme for a specific purpose.

“There are a number of reasons: the first is, of course, a rewriting of history ... the second is the maintenance of one’s own political interests, the third is, I think, the service of foreign political interests,” the representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized.

According to her, Russia became aware of the development and approval by Poland of measures for "classical disinformation." In this regard, Zakharova mentioned an article by Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Moravecki on World War II.

Recall that he published material in the Politico newspaper in which he made a series of statements that Zakharova described as “a criminal attempt to rewrite the history of World War II.”

In particular, in an article, Moravecki argued that the Red Army allegedly did not liberate Warsaw, and the USSR could have liberated Auschwitz earlier, but did not. In addition, the politician in his work indicated that the "Soviet occupation" of Central Europe allegedly cost "millions" of lives.

Note that in January, Vladimir Putin made several statements about the importance of preserving historical memory. During a meeting with veterans and representatives of patriotic organizations, Putin announced that Russia would open a center for archival documents to counter attempts to misrepresent history.

Speaking about the attempts of several countries to distort the history of the Great Patriotic War, Putin pointed to the large amount of historical information available to Russia, with which you can fight against attempts to distort historical events.

“We must contrast this with objective information, which we have enough. I already spoke about this in the message. We will create a center from archival documents, video, photo materials that will not allow anyone to distort this story for decades ahead, or maybe for a much longer period of time, ”Putin said in the program“ Moscow. Kremlin. Putin "on the channel" Russia 1 ".

An order to the government to create an archival center was published on January 27.