For years, the Tehran Times has served as a communication channel for distinguished members of Tehran’s diplomatic corps. The two recent correspondences received in the past weeks are just the latest in many such exchanges the publication has facilitated.

Last month, the Polish Foreign Minister attended a presentation orchestrated by a U.S.-based Zionist group at the UK Parliament. Standing next to a drone provided by the group, he claimed it was an Iranian drone sent to Russia for use in the Ukraine war, accusing Iran of undermining European security.

Subsequently, the Polish Chargé d’Affaires in Tehran, Marcin Wilczek, sent a correspondence to the Tehran Times. His letter addressed an earlier interview published by the daily, which quoted a renowned Russian-based professor who argued following the foreign minister’s controversial remarks that Poland had forgotten history—specifically the period during World War II when Iran offered shelter to countless Polish people fleeing the horrors of war in Europe. Wilczek argued that Warsaw’s action at the UK Parliament was not aimed at Iran, but rather at Russia, which he claimed was "meddling" in Iran-Poland relations.

Now, the Russian Ambassador to Tehran, Alexey Dedov, has provided his own correspondence. He addresses what he characterizes as substantive inaccuracies within Wilczek’s piece, articulating the official position of the Russian Federation on matters of European security, historical narrative, and bilateral relations.

Below is the full text of the Russian diplomat’s statement:

The Soviet people suffered more than any other nation in the world during the Second World War. Our ancestors sacrificed 27 million lives to liberate the world from the monstrous ideology of Hitler, who regarded both Russians and Poles as subhumans.

We have never denied the human tragedies of the past; we grieve and preserve in our hearts the memory of, and respect for, all who fell victim to the catastrophe unleashed by Hitler, his allies, and accomplices.

However, historical events cannot be viewed one-sidedly; history is accurate only when considered as a whole, based on the full complexity of facts and circumstances.

Relations with Poland have always been complicated. At the beginning of the 17th century, the Polish king invaded Russia, weakened by the Time of Troubles. In addition to occupying the western regions, Polish—Lithuanian forces seized Moscow for two years. Only on 4 November 1612 the foreign invaders were expelled from the capital by the people's volunteer corps.

In 1919, the Polish authorities again insidiously exploited our country's internal difficulties, which was then engulfed in civil war, and seized its western parts, where they subsequently carried out a long-term policy aimed at erasing national identity and enforcing violent Polonization. As a result of military actions supported by European allies, Poland acquired the western territories of Belarus and Ukraine. 

During the Soviet-Polish War, at least 157,000 Red Army soldiers were taken prisoner. More than 80,000 never returned from numerous Polish camps, where inhumane conditions prevailed. Prisoners were executed, tortured, starved, and denied medical treatment for widespread infectious diseases, condemning them to inevitable death. In October 1919, a commission of the International Committee of the Red Cross, inspecting the Polish camp in Brest-Litovsk, stated: "The camp was a veritable necropolis." The Polish ruling circles deliberately downplay the number of those who perished in order to conceal this bloody page in bilateral history.

On the eve of the Second World War, Great Britain and France made it clear to Germany that they would not impede its expansion eastward. Their intention was obvious: to push the Nazi regime in Berlin into military confrontation with the Soviet Union while keeping themselves on the sidelines.

When in October 1938 Germany occupied the Sudetenland, Poland became its accomplice and, in coordination with Hitler, annexed pan of Czechoslovak territory (the Tesin area of Silesia), for which it earned the nickname "the hyena of Europe". Throughout the 1930s, senior officials of Nazi Germany frequently visited Poland, including Minister of Propaganda Goebbels and Reichsmarschall Göring (second most powerful person in the Nazi Party), who was later convicted by the Nuremberg Tribunal as a war criminal. Poland's Foreign Minister Beck met with Hitler on numerous occasions. Official representatives of the two countries maintained a regular confidential dialogue in which, in a spirit of partnership, they discussed the mutual expansion of their foreign policy influence. Among the topics raised was the "weakening and destruction of Russia." Poland made many grave mistakes in the years preceding the Second World War and ultimately fell victim to Nazi aggression.

The USSR, on the contrary, made every effort to establish a full-fledged collective security system in Europe that might have prevented military conflict and its catastrophic consequences. Unfortunately, the Western powers were not interested in this, and the USSR was forced to normalize relations with Germany in order to gain time and strategic depth before the inevitable military confrontation with the Third Reich.

In September 1939, Germany attacked Poland and within two weeks crushed it, occupying a significant part of its territory. On 17 September, the Red Army crossed Poland's eastern border and within ten days liberated Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. The timely actions of the USSR spared though only temporarily — the population of the then Eastern Polish territories, including Jews, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Russians, from genocide.  Many Polish citizens and refugees were immediately given the opportunity to emigrate. It is important to note that even London and Paris as Warsaw's allies did not consider the USSR's actions as an "aggression".

Under Soviet—Polish agreements, a new Polish army under General Anders was formed on Soviet territory in 1941. Even during the most difficult period of 1941 1942, the USSR continued to supply the "Anders Army" with significant quantities of weapons and equipment. The Soviet authorities did not obstruct the subsequent transfer of this army to Iran at the request of General Anders himself. As for the difficult conditions under which Poles lived on Soviet territory during the Second World War, these were a harsh reality faced by all Soviet citizens due to the inhumanity and brutality of Nazi Germany and its collaborators.

During the occupation of Poland by the Third Reich, about 6 million people perished. Numerous concentration camps and death camps were established on Polish territory. The Nazis murdered more than 2 million Jews and 50,000 Roma. People were killed in gas chambers, shot, and their bodies burned in crematoria. Auschwitz became the grim symbol of this genocide. In July 1944, the Red Army began the liberation of Poland and ultimately sacrificed about 600,000 soldiers and officers in doing so. One of the symbols of Poland's salvation was the legendary operation carried out in January 1945 by Soviet intelligence officers and Red Army units to prevent the detonation of explosives planted in Krakow, according to a German plan to destroy the city completely. As a result, Krakow's historical appearance was preserved. Are we still to believe that Russia "owes" Poland something after all this?

Unfortunately, Poland today, like other Western countries, pursues an extremely hostile policy toward Russia — and toward Iran as well. They join numerous unlawful sanctions against our countries, supply Ukraine with weapons, allocate enormous funds for further military operations, and undermine peaceful initiatives that we put forward to resolve the root causes of the conflict. For example, foreign mercenaries are currently conducting intensive military exercises in Poland's border areas with Ukraine, with the aim of later being deployed to central regions of Ukraine.