Will Putin follow Stalin's Katyn strategy on the airline shoot-down?

REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino

In dealing with the tragedy of the downed Malaysian airliner MH17, the leader of the Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin is behaving more and more like a throwback to Josef Stalin and his cover-up of the Katyn massacre. It was Stalin who approved the murder of thousands of Polish nationals in 1940, including military officers, dumping their bodies in mass graves hidden from view in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia.

If the Wehrmacht had not invaded Russia in Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the evidence of this massacre would never have been found. Here is a recount of how the crime was discovered, taken from Wikipedia:

The government of National-Socialist Germany announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest in 1943. When the London-based  Polish government-in-exile asked for an investigation by the International Red Cross, Stalin immediately severed diplomatic relations with it. The Soviet Union claimed the victims had been murdered by the Nazis, and continued to deny responsibility for the massacres until 1990, when it officially acknowledged and condemned the perpetration of the killings by the NKVD, as well as the subsequent cover-up by the Soviet government.

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In early 1943, Rudolf von Gersdorff, a German officer serving as the intelligence liaison between the Wehrmacht's Army Group Center and Abwehr, received reports about mass graves of Polish military officers. These reports stated the graves were in the forest of Goat Hill near Katyn. He passed the reports to his superiors (sources vary on when exactly the Germans became aware of the graves — from "late 1942" to January–February 1943, and when the German top decision makers in Berlin received those reports [as early as 1 March or as late as 4 April]). 

On 13 April, Berlin Radio broadcast to the world that German military forces in the Katyn forest near Smolensk had uncovered a ditch that was "28 metres long and 16 metres wide [92 ft by 52 ft], in which the bodies of 3,000 Polish officers were piled up in 12 layers." The broadcast went on to charge the Soviets with carrying out the massacre in 1940.

The Germans brought in a European Red Cross committee called the Katyn Commission consisting of twelve forensic experts and their staff from Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Croatia, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, Slovakia, and Hungary.

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The Soviet government immediately denied the German charges and claimed that the Polish prisoners of war had been engaged in construction work west of Smolensk and consequently were captured and executed by invading German units in August 1941. The Soviet response on 15 April to the initial German broadcast of 13 April, prepared by the Soviet Information Bureau, stated that "Polish prisoners-of-war who in 1941 were engaged in construction work west of Smolensk and who...fell into the hands of the German-Fascist hangmen."

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In April 1943 the Polish government-in-exile [in the UK] insisted on bringing the matter to the negotiation table with the Soviets and on opening an investigation by the International Red Cross. Stalin, in response, accused the Polish government of collaborating with Nazi Germany, broke off diplomatic relations with it, and started a campaign to get the Western Allies to recognize the alternative Polish pro-Soviet government in Moscow led by Wanda Wasilewska. Wladyslaw Sikorski, PM of Polish govt.-in-exile, died in an air crash in July—an event that was convenient for the Allied leaders.

Mass murderer Joseph Stalin - looking cool, calm and collected - is being rehabilitated in today's Russia as the leader who did whatever was necessary to save his country from the fascists.