Poland, in statements that will be remembered for decades to come, makes to President Putin

Below comments Friday by Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski at the United Nations Security Council.

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I am surprised by the tone and content of the presentation made by the Russian Ambassador.

I thought I might be helpful by correcting the record. Ambassador Nebenzia described Kiev as an agent of the West. In fact, Kiev is struggling to be independent from anyone.

He describes them as the Kyiv criminal regime. In fact, Ukraine has a democratically elected government.

He calls them Nazis. Well, the president is Jewish, the defense minister is Muslim, and they have no political prisoners.

He said that Ukraine is mired in corruption. Well, Alexei Navalny has documented how honest and upright his country is.

He blamed the war on American neocolonialism. In fact, Russia was trying to annihilate Ukraine in the 19th century, back under the Bolsheviks, and now this is the third attempt.

He said we are prisoners of Russophobia. “Phobia” means irrational fear. Yet we are threatened almost every day by the former Russian president and Putin's advocates of nuclear annihilation. I tell you, this is not irrational. When Russia threatens us, we trust it.

He said that we deny Russia's security interests. incorrect. We only started to rearm when Russia started invading its neighbours.

He even said that Poland attacked Russia during World War II. what is he talking about? It was the Soviet Union that attacked Poland with Nazi Germany on September 17, 1939. They even held a joint victory parade on September 27.

He says Russia has always repulsed aggression. Well, what were Russian troops doing at the gates of Warsaw in August 1920? Were they on a topographical journey? The fact is that every time Russia was invaded, it invaded ten times.

He says it is a treacherous proxy war by the West. My advice is – don't fall into the Western trap. Withdraw your forces to the international border and avoid this Western conspiracy.

He also says there was an illegal coup in Kiev in 2014. I was there. There was no coup. President Yanukovych murdered hundreds of his own citizens, then was impeached by the democratically elected Ukrainian parliament, including his own party, the Party of Regions.

Finally, he says that we, the West, are trying in one way or another to convince Russia that it can never be defeated. Well, Russia did not win the Crimean War, it did not win the Russo-Japanese War, it did not win World War I, it did not win the Battle of Warsaw, it did not win in Afghanistan, and it is. He did not win the Cold War.

But there is good news. After every failure there were reforms.

Such demagoguery is unbecoming of a permanent member of the Security Council. But what the ambassador achieved was to remind us why we resisted Soviet domination and what Ukraine is resisting now.

They failed to subjugate us then. They will fail to subjugate Ukraine and subjugate us now.