Highlight
Last week, a government-owned television channel showed Katyn, an Oscar-nominated film by the Polish director Andrzej Wajda that portrays the massacre and the Soviet cover-up. And for the first time Russia has invited Poland to take part in the Victory Day parade on Red Square this year for the 65th anniversary of Nazi Germanys defeat. Putin praised Polish soldiers and citizens for their bravery in resisting the Nazis. Still, after years of back-and-forth diplomatic sniping, relations between the erstwhile cold war allies have warmed of late. Many Russians consider the war a defining moment in their history, in which as many as 25 million Soviet citizens died, according to some estimates. Medvedev, have lashed out at what they consider falsifications of history meant to denigrate the Soviet Unions role in World War II. Russians have been angered by Polish attempts to equate the Katyn murders and other atrocities carried out by Red Army soldiers in Poland during World War II with Nazi crimes.