18/09/2026
Read H.E. Ambassador Patryk Błaszczak's response to the op-ed by the Russian and Chinese ambassadors to New Zealand published in nzherald.co.nz 👇
💬I could not agree more with the Chinese and Russian ambassadors to New Zealand, Wang Xiaolong and Stanislav Krans, who wrote in their joint op-ed in the Herald that "we must remember the global tragedy of World War II as a valuable lesson, no matter how much time has passed".
Curiously for an appeal for remembrance, however, key historical facts seem to have been left out of the article.
As a representative of a country that lost nearly one fifth of its pre-war population, or about six million people, in World War II, I feel compelled to rectify some of these omissions. That I should do so [on] the 87th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland is highly symbolic.
The op-ed was written to mark the 81st anniversary of the end of World War II, commemorated on September 2. However, it fails to mention how and why the war began, even though both anniversaries fall on consecutive days. Surely, this has nothing to do with the role that the Soviet Union played in unleashing the horror of World War II.
The war began on September 1, 1939, when N**i Germany, in collusion with the Soviet Union, invaded Poland. Eight days earlier, the two totalitarian powers had signed the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with a secret protocol through which Hi**er and Stalin carved up Central and Eastern Europe into their respective spheres of control. Seventeen days after Hi**er’s invasion of Poland from the west, the Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east, and the two armies even held a joint victory parade in Brest-Litovsk on September 22.
Poles have utmost respect for the horrific blood sacrifice of all Allied nations. However, Stalin’s troops did not bring freedom to Poland, but replaced N**i German occupation with Soviet terror, forced control and economic exploitation. The "huge wave of liberation and decolonisation" triggered by the Allied victory in World War II reached Poland only in 1989 when the Solidarity movement won a landslide victory in the first partially free elections since coming under Soviet domination, and in 1993 when Russian troops finally left our country for good.
The weight of the Soviet yoke imposed on Poland is best illustrated by our stellar post-1989 economic success: within one generation, Poland’s GDP grew more than eleven-fold, surpassing US$1 trillion ($1.75t) last year, with average local buying power per person now equalling New Zealand's.
While the Axis Powers' war crimes were tried at Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials, those committed by the Soviet Union, like the Katyń Massacre, a collective name for a series of mass executions of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war (POWs) and members of the intelligentsia, shot in the back of their heads on Stalin's explicit orders in the spring of 1940, have gone unpunished.
I wholeheartedly agree with the call to "strongly resist any attempt to falsify the history of [WWII] events [and] whitewash criminals". A good starting point would be to confront Stalin's murderous legacy instead of erecting in recent years more than 100 monuments in his honour across Russia.
If anything constitutes a direct challenge to the legacy of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials – indeed to the entire post-war international order – it is Russia's illegal aggression against Ukraine and the documented evidence showing its troops deliberately targeting civilians, kidnapping and brainwashing thousands of Ukrainian children and torturing and killing POWs.
These atrocities are why the United Nations and numerous governments – including my own – have said Moscow needs to be held accountable for war crimes.
The two ambassadors seem to me to impute that New Zealand finds itself on the wrong side of history for not supporting Russian-sponsored UN General Assembly resolutions that abuse the just and necessary cause of fighting all contemporary forms of extremist and totalitarian ideologies, including neo-N**ism. In fact, what these resolutions are intended to do is promote what I argue is Russia's distorted version of history, disinform audiences worldwide and attempt to justify its brutal and illegal war of aggression against Ukraine. Supporting them, in my view, would only undermine genuine efforts to combat neo-N**ism.
True, during World War II, New Zealand was squarely on the right side of history – fighting, often arm-in-arm with Polish soldiers, in major battles of the war, and, in 1944, providing safe haven for 733 Polish children and their caregivers, victims of the Soviet mass deportations to the forced labour camps of the Gulag.
It is no different today, when New Zealand is right to sanction Russia for violating the principles enshrined in the UN Charter that the two ambassadors claim to defend.
On March 2, 2022 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling Russia to "immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders". Only five countries voted against it: Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria.
I was thrilled to read that "Russia and China are determined to stand firmly on the side of international justice" and that it is "vital to respect… principles aimed at preventing wars, genocides, war crimes, torture and other crimes against humanity".
Does that mean the Russian President is ready to render himself to the International Criminal Court - ICC, which issued an arrest warrant against him? Or that Russia will take responsibility for the downing of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and the death of all 298 people on board, as ruled by the European Court of Human Rights? Or that it will withdraw its troops to the internationally recognised borders and put on trial those responsible for the Russian atrocities in Ukraine? Or that it will stop its campaign of repeated sabotage and hybrid attacks on the territory of NATO and European Union member states?
China, with the huge leverage it has on Russia, is very well placed today to help bring about some of these outcomes.
Until that happens, attempts at moral grandstanding by Russian officials should be met with "yeah, nah". He pirau kai mā te arero e kape.
Radosław Sikorski Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych EU vs Disinformation
