Moscow denied the existence of the secret protocol until 1989, when Mikhail Gorbachev condemned it. But Vladimir Putin has gone back to defending the pact with Hitler. While he criticised it as ‘immoral’ when visiting Poland in 2009, more recently he’s asked ‘what’s bad about it?’. At the same time Moscow furiously denies, against all evidence, that there was ever a Soviet-Nazi alliance.
The enthusiasm of Soviet support for its Nazi ally undermines claims that Stalin concluded his pact with Hitler reluctantly. After the German attack, Moscow initiated military intelligence cooperation with Berlin. And when sixteen days later the Soviets invaded eastern Poland, the two sides agreed to coordinate in the crushing of Polish resistance. In the Soviets’ case, this included deporting up to 1.5 million Poles and murdering about 65,000 military, ‘class enemies’ and ‘counter-revolutionaries’ – including 22,000 in the infamous Katyn Massacre. Joint Soviet-German victory parades were held in Lviv and Brest-Litovsk. Stalin and Hitler exchanged warm Christmas greetings.
After the Nazi-Soviet invasion, Molotov told the Supreme Soviet ‘one swift blow to Poland, first by the German army and then by the Red Army, and nothing was left of this ugly offspring of the Versailles Treaty.’ There followed Stalin’s attack on Finland, and the invasions of the Baltic states and northern areas of Romania.
In 1940, Molotov underlined to Hitler that Russian supplies had ‘not been without influence upon the great German victories’.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2019/08/molotovs-poisonous-cocktail/
A Polish soldier encounters a German and a Russian soldier, which does he shoot first?
The German, of course. Business before pleasure.