AFP. 18 January 2002. No Katyn apology for Poland: Russian Communist leader.
MOSCOW -- Russian Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said Friday that Russia should not bow to Poland's wishes for an apology over the World War II massacre of Polish officers by Soviet agents. "We don't have to apologise. We lost 600,000 lives to liberate Poland. Stalin fought so that Poland should become an independent state, and we have helped Poland to build dozens of factories and enterprises," the Communist leader told reporters. Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski, during a visit to Warsaw by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin this week, expressed regret that Moscow had never formally apologised for the atrocity at Katyn, in western Russia, in 1940, when thousands of Polish officers were killed on Stalin's orders. Zyuganov meanwhile warned that Russia was in danger of losing out heavily from a collapse in world oil prices. Problems loomed in coming months since "the government will not be able to count on its petro-dollars ... (and) will not have enough to pay its teachers and doctors," he said. The Kremlin has "no new economic ideas apart from the sale of monopolies on its natural resources," he warned. He accused Putin of carrying out "treasonable" policies by "handing over (the country's) geopolitical space" to Western interests, notably in central Asia where several former Soviet republics have allowed US forces to set up military bases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews
