Russian officials criticize Zelensky World War Two comments

Key Russian officials have criticized Ukrainian President
Zelensky for his provocative comments delivered in Poland on Jan. 27 on the
Soviet Union’s role in World War Two. “We are categorically in disagreement
with this statement,” said on Jan. 28 Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry
Peskov, as reported by the Interfax news agency. “With this statement,
Ukraine’s president is in solidarity with an extremely faulty, in our
conviction, viewpoint of the Polish leadership and is in solidarity with a
viewpoint that is offensive to tens of millions of Russians and citizens of CIS
countries, whose fathers, grandfathers and relatives gave their lives for
liberating Europe, including Poland, from fascism. We don’t accept this
statement and consider it a mistake and an offense from the viewpoint of the
memory of our grandfathers.”

The comments were also criticized the same day by
Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Head Sergey Naryshkin. “It’s apparent that
Mr. Zelensky is delving more and more into the ideas of Ukrainian nationalism,
not wanting to remember the principles upon which units of the Red Army were
named,” he said, as reported by the TASS news agency.

In a joint press brief with Polish President Andrzej Duda
during commemorations of the 75-year anniversary of the liberation of the
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, Zelensky laid blame for the start of
World War Two on both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, in what was a radical
departure from the World War Two narrative held by the majority of Ukrainians.
“Poland and the entire Polish people were the first to feel the consequences of
the criminal conspiracy between totalitarian regimes. This led to the start of
World War Two and allowed the Nazis to launch the deathly Holocaust flywheel,”
said Zelensky, becoming the first Ukrainian president to lay partial blame for
the Holocaust on the Soviet government.

The “criminal conspiracy” phrase refers to the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, in which the Nazi and Soviet
governments secretly divvied up their spheres of influence in eastern European
countries, particularly Poland. In what has been perceived as an attempt at
historical revisionism, Zelensky also referred to Ukrainian-named army units as
having liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp, without mentioning that they
were part of the Soviet army and consisted of non-Ukrainians as well. “We will
never forget Ihor Pobyrchenko, the commander of the T-34 tank that, together
with his crew, was the first to break the gates of Auschwitz. (We will never
forget) all the soldiers of the strike battalion of the 100 Lviv Division that
entered the concentration camp under the command of Poltava native of Jewish
heritage Anatoliy Shapiro, and who freed the camp together with the fighters of
the 322 Division of the First Ukrainian Front,” Zelensky said, as reported by
the zik.ua news site.

Zenon Zawada: Zelensky’s
comments will be extensively exploited by the Kremlin to not only sow division
among Ukrainians, but to discredit Zelensky in the eyes of his core electorate,
which is southeastern Ukrainians, who have a positive view of the Soviet Union
and its role in World War Two. The comments were not only unnecessary from a
political viewpoint, but counterproductive considering they undermine his
support base in the southeastern regions. They are a radical departure from the
standard Soviet narrative, which depicts the Red Army exclusively as liberators
of Europe’s concentration camps and Nazi German fascism.

Zelensky has made improving relations with Poland a
top foreign policy priority, yet these comments weren’t needed to advance that
goal. We can only attribute the comments to incompetence among Zelensky’s
speechwriters, or a radical – almost quixotic – attempt by them to remold the
Ukrainian consciousness on World War Two. In any case, it’s a risky move that
makes Zelensky vulnerable to attacks by Ukraine’s pro-Russian forces in his
core regions of support. Moreover, the comments won’t rebuild his ruined trust
among the very electorate of western Ukrainians that largely share these views.
If Zelensky continues on this path, he won’t have any core electorate to rely
on, particularly if the parliamentary coalition disintegrates in the next few
years and early elections are held. That’s especially the case if he’s unable
to gain peace in Donbas. These comments hurt that effort as well, being certain
to sour relations with Putin.