"The Economist' has been blogging about the controversy surrounding former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski's claim that that in 2008 Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed to Poland's then-prime minister that they divide Ukraine between themselves:
A Kremlin spokesman has called the story “nonsense”, and without corroboration, it is hard to say whether an offer was in fact made. But the revelation has set off a bomb in Polish politics. The vision of larger powers carving up weaker ones is inflammatory here: the country has itself been partitioned twice, once in the 1790s by Russia, Prussia and Austria-Hungary, and again in 1939 by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. And although there is nostalgia in Poland for cities like Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, and Lviv in western Ukraine, which were Polish before the second world war, there is no significant irredentist sentiment. Unlike Hungary, which pines for territories lost after the first world war, modern Poland has reconciled itself to its post-1945 borders.
Mr Sikorski has tried to back away from his comments, tweeting that they had not been “authorised”—a Polish peculiarity that gives interviewees the right to check or change quotes. In a chaotic news conference on Tuesday, Mr Sikorski, now the speaker of the Polish parliament, avoided answering most questions about the interview. He later explained that Mr Putin’s proposal seemed “surreal” at the time, as it came before Russia’s war against Georgia in August 2008, which made Russian expansionism more tangible. But the revelations could damage his own reputation and that of Mr Tusk, a popular leader who will take over as president of the European Council in December. Mr Tusk's visit to Moscow in February, 2008 was part of a Polish attempt to warm ties with Russia, an effort that initially appeared to pay off. But if Mr Tusk already knew about the Kremlin’s imperial ambitions, that policy of rapprochement could appear to be naïve.
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