In first Russia, Polish PMs to honour Katyn WWII victims

Russia has marked the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad with memories of survivors and fallen soldiers as President Vladimir Putin warned the country can be 'invincible'. Safron Ryzhakov, 90, did not flinch as the cannon salute rang out across Volgograd's Square of the Fallen Fighters, sending drifts of wet snow down from a roof onto the crowds below.

A Russian-made TU-154 plane, carrying the Polish president, his wife and a score of other dignitaries including, the Central Bank governor, the chief of the general staff, members of parliament and government has crashed today near Smolensk in Russia, killing all passengers aboard.

"Katyn", a film by Poland's Andrzej Wajda on the World War II-era massacre of Polish soldiers by occupying Soviet forces, premiered Friday on Russian television.Since its release a year ago, the Oscar-nominated film has only twice been screened in Russia, where the country's role in the killings is still contested by some after the Soviet Union blamed German Nazis for the killings.Only in 1990, a year before the USSR's final collapse, did then-Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev admit his country's responsibility.

Russia's state archive on Wednesday published previously secret files on the 1940 massacre of Polish officers by the Soviets at Katyn Forest, following an order by President Dmitry Medvedev, it said."On the order of Russian President D.A. Medvedev, electronic copies of authentic archival documents on the 'Katyn Problem' from 'Packet No. 1', which were held for decades in the Communist Party archives, have been published on the website of the state archives," it said in a statement.

Russia's parliament accepted Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's responsibility for the 1940 Katyn Forest massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners—a declaration that Poland's leaders welcomed, cautiously, as a step toward justice for an atrocity that still poisons the two countries' relations.

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION] Today we’re at the end of another major era. Let’s call it the “Columbian” era — as in the Christopher Columbus era, where white European people can sail across the world and go places, do things and impose their will whether they’re Spanish, Dutch, French, British, Danish, or whatever. Of course, for the last 65 years of this period, America has been at the top. And what has kept America on top is the simple fact that the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency.

Soner Kistak submits: Poland remains a remarkably attractive market. The Polish economy is showing many positive surprises, expanding 1.7% in the last year, making it the sole EU member which has avoided recession. Moreover, the economy is forecast to grow 3% in 2010. The most recent employment figures also confirm the tenacity of the Polish economy.

It’s true that the old Polish system of government, requiring unanimity from an assembly of nobles, seems like a bad way to run a country. But I think the theory that this bad procedural rule was responsible for Poland’s elimination as a country isn’t all that well-supported by the evidence. Poland re-emerged as an independent country after World War I, but it found itself once again partitioned by Germany and Russia in 1939.