© AP Photo/ Markus Schreiber
On Thursday, while on an official visit to Berlin, the bespectacled young politician was interviewed live by the German TV channel ARD, where he claimed that the USSR had kicked off the Second World War by invading Germany.
"All of us still clearly remember the Soviet invasion of Ukraine and Germany," he said. "We need to avoid it."
"Nobody has the right to rewrite the results of the Second World War," he added. "Russia's President Putin is trying to do exactly this."
Yatsenyuk, however, did not clarify what particular results of the Second World War President Putin is trying to rewrite. The TV host seemed uninterested in pursuing the matter.
Prior to the Second World War, most of Ukraine, including Kiev, was part of the USSR although what was to become western Ukraine was split between Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania.
© YouTubeUkrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk interviewed live by the German TV channel ARD.
In September of 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union split Poland and entered into other countries which had been established in the wake of the First World War.
Although several independent Ukrainian states had existed briefly following the collapse of the Russian Empire, these were short-lived and had been subsumed into Poland and the Soviet Union by 1921.
And of course, it was Nazi Germany which invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 under the codename Operation Barbarossa. Soviet troops eventually did take Berlin in May of 1945, after a grueling conflict which had cost the USSR over 22 million lives.
The TV host seemed not to be aware of the Prime Minister's historical gaffe.
The video of the interview is available on YouTube in German, Ukrainian and Russian.
The prime minister's remarks have already been criticized by Russia.
In his Twitter, the head of Russia's parliamentary committee on international affairs Aleksei Pushkov made the following comment:
"Yatsenyuk has finally gone off his rocker. After his statement regarding 'the Soviet invasion into Germany and Ukraine' during the Second World War, one can't take him seriously."
Or perhaps on purpose. It is hard to imagine anyone so ill informed on WW2, and its campaigns.
Are the people of Europe dumbed down like they are in the USA? A gullible mass of people?
A simple peek at Wikipedia would inform the worst student of history.
Perhaps the news media has an agenda too? Even though it was a bold faced lie, no correcting of the speaker?
I could NEVER be a news show person, and listen to such ill informed statements without stating the truth. Or at least correcting the person.
Obviously, I would not be employed very long at the TV news show..LOL
Pravdaseeker