Poland is preparing a lawsuit against Russia for reparations for crimes committed during Soviet rule in the country, repeating its 2022 demand for €1.3 trillion in compensation from Germany for World War II-era crimes.
The Financial Times writes about this.
The director of the Institute of War Losses, Bartosz Gondek, who was tasked by Prime Minister Donald Tusk to investigate Russiaʼs historical crimes, said the investigation would be much larger than the work on Nazi atrocities, as it would cover another four decades of the Cold War, when Poland remained under Soviet control.
Gondek said it was “premature” to discuss whether the compensation demanded from Moscow could exceed the amount demanded from Berlin in 2022. His team of about 10 Polish historians and researchers faced greater obstacles than those encountered in calculating claims against Germany. Polish historians cannot access confidential Russian archives, and many relevant documents were falsified or destroyed during the Soviet era.
Gondek also said that his institute, in addition to Soviet war crimes, would seek to assess the consequences that Poland faced after losing part of its population and eastern territories after 1945. According to him, the eastern report was supposed to reflect the “long-term economic and social consequences of Soviet systemic domination” during the Cold War.
Polandʼs claims against Germany remain unresolved and contentious. Germany has argued that the reparations issue was legally closed after World War II. Meanwhile, Polandʼs main opposition party, the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS), says Tusk has not done enough to force Berlin to pay compensation. Tuskʼs pro-European coalition replaced PiS in power in 2023.
Arkadiusz Mułarczyk, a member of the European Parliament from the Law and Justice party, who led the lawsuit against Germany in 2022, said his party had always intended to file a claim against Russia later. But he accused Tusk of trying to use insults against Moscow now to distract from the “stagnation” in negotiations with Berlin over German reparations.
For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine, please follow us on X.