Putin proposed dividing Ukraine
KYIV • Vladimir Putin told Poland’s prime minister in 2008 they should divide Ukraine between them, according to a former Polish foreign minister.
Radoslaw Sikorski, who is now the parliamentary speaker, said the Russian president suggested to Poland’s then-leader Donald Tusk the two countries should “sort out” the former Soviet republic.
In an interview with the U.S. magazine Politico, Mr. Sikorski said the invitation to carve up Ukraine came during an official visit by Mr. Tusk to Russia.
“Putin wants Poland to commit troops to Ukraine. These were the signals they sent us.… We have known how they think for years,” Mr. Sikorski said. “[Putin] went on to say Ukraine is an artificial country and that Lwow is a Polish city and why don’t we just sort it out together.”
Poland ruled the west Ukrainian city of Lviv, which Poles call Lwow, from the 14th to 18th centuries, and fought a successful war to seize it back from a short-lived Ukrainian republic in 1918-19. It was incorporated into the Soviet Union when Stalin and Hitler partitioned Poland in 1939.
Mr. Sikorski said Mr. Tusk did not comment at the time because he knew he was being recorded, but Warsaw later “made it very, very clear to [the Russians] — we wanted nothing to do with this.”
Mr. Putin’s spokesman dismissed the allegations Tuesday, saying the story “looks like a fantasy.”
But the claims, which suggest Russia had designs on Ukraine long before the annexation of Crimea in March, threatened to plunge frosty relations between Moscow and Kyiv into even deeper crisis.
Mr. Sikorski later played down the comments, saying the interview had not been authorized and his words may have been “misinterpreted.”
In a later interview, he said Mr. Putin may not so much have been making a “proposal” as a “grim historical joke.” He said the information on the Russian leader’s “proposal” was not passed on to NATO, the European Union and the Polish public because such talk seemed “surreal.”
It is not the first time Mr. Sikorski has mentioned such proposals from Russia. Earlier this year, he claimed Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party and a deputy speaker in the State Duma, had written to the Polish, Romanian and Hungarian governments with similar proposals. Mr. Zhirinovsky is not a member of the government and it is unclear whether Mr. Putin would have known about or authorized such letters.