By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

WARSAW, Poland – On Wednesday, the Polish parliament passed a resolution that condemned the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union in 1939 at the beginning of World War II, labeling it a ‘war crime’ and ‘genocide’.  In response the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, indicated that it felt “deep disappointment at the Polish attempt to compare Nazi Germany with the Soviet Union.”

Recent documents given to the Institute of National Remembrance of Warsaw by the Ukrainian government offer new evidence indicating that Soviet police forces (NVKD) were directly responsible for the killing of 350 Poles the Roviensky oblast from 1939 to 1940.  Those were just a fraction of the approximately 20,000 Poles that would be killed in the Katyn forests.  Those killings, known as the Katyn Massacre, and the subsequent deportations of Polish citizens to Soviet internment camps, were the reasons behind the passage of the Polish resolution.

According to the documents from the Ukrainian government, the NVKD’s purpose in committing the killings was in part to eliminate leading members of Polish society, including landowners, military officers, and intellectuals.  At the center of the NVKD’s actions was a coordinated effort to remove the leading citizens of, thereby undermine, Polish society.

The Soviet Union argued that their invasion of Poland in September 1939, following Germany’s invasion of western Poland, was necessary to protect the Polish, Ukrainian, and Belarusian citizens from the oncoming German forces that were left unprotected by the collapse of the Polish government.  The Russian government has never admitted that the invasion was the result of aggression on the part of the Soviet Union.

For more information, please see:

POLSKIE RADIO – Ukraine exposes Katyn executioners – 25 September 2009

RIA NOVOSTI – Moscow Says Resolution on Soviet ‘aggression’ harms ties – 24 September 2009

EPOCH TIMES – Polish Resolution Names Soviet Invasion as Tyrannical – 23 September 2009

UPI – Poles Accuse Russia of WWII Genocide – 23 September 2009