No apology at Katyn ceremony

9th April 2010

Russia took some tentative steps along the rocky road to reconciliation with Poland when Vladimir Putin attended ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre.

The Russian prime minister, who was the first Russian leader to take part in formal events commemorating the massacre, laid flowers at the memorial in western Russia to the estimated 22,000 Polish officers and civilians murdered by Stalin’s NKVD in April 1940.

With the Soviet Union long denying its guilt over the massacre, and Russia frustrating Poland with its apparent failure to show any contrition over Katyn, during a speech at the ceremony Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, made clear what his country ...