Putin: Nothing Was Wrong With the Soviet Union’s Pact With Nazi Germany

Did he make this statement because Russia has entered, or will soon enter, another secret pact with Germany?

Russian President Vladimir Putin said November 4 that he sees nothing wrong with the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact that the Soviet Union made with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany just days before World War ii broke out.

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a promise of non-belligerence by either party toward the other. Just a week after it was signed, Germany invaded Poland, officially igniting World War II.

“Serious research must show that those were the foreign policy methods then,” Putin said to a group of young historians in Moscow. “The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression treaty with Germany. People say: ‘Ach, that’s bad.’ But what’s bad about that if the Soviet Union didn’t want to fight; what’s bad about it?”

Ukraine may have to go nuclear, says Kiev lawmaker

KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine may have to arm itself with nuclear weapons if the United States and other world powers refuse to enforce a security pact that obligates them to reverse the Moscow-backed takeover of Crimea, a member of the Ukraine parliament told USA TODAY.

The United States, Great Britain and Russia agreed in a pact “to assure Ukraine’s territorial integrity” in return for Ukraine giving up a nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union after declaring independence in 1991, said Pavlo Rizanenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament.

“We gave up nuclear weapons because of this agreement,” said Rizanenko, a member of the Udar Party headed by Vitali Klitschko, a candidate for president. “Now there’s a strong sentiment in Ukraine that we made a big mistake.”