Denial of massacres is par for the course

THE Katyn forest massacre in 1940/41 of over 22,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia was supposedly carried out by the Nazis, or so the story goes at least according to the Russians. Churchill was aware of Russian involvement through British intelligence but chose to keep quiet on this at the time, as Russia was our ally and we needed them to combat Hitler.

However, when Mr Gorbachev became the Russian leader his policy of ‘openness’ was a refreshing change and documents revealing Stalin’s instructions for the massacre of the Poles were released. So there in black and white was proof that Stalin and not the Germans was responsible for the massacre.

However, years later the communist party of the Russian Federation and other ‘hardliners’ denied that Stalin was responsible for the massacre and that the ‘Stalin’ documents were forgeries.

Putin’s denial that Russian troops were responsible for the recent massacres in Ukraine are par for the course in his Russian hardline psyche, so should we really be surprised at such a denial?

But with his complete iron fist stranglehold of all Russian media outlets, however will the Russian people ever be aware of this hardliner nutter’s lies?

As Disraeli once said: “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” He should have added “Unless you live in Russia”. Only time will tell in Putin’s Russia before he takes the whole world to hell in a handcart!

Edward Kynaston Lydney, Gloucestershire