President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday slammed what he called attempts to rewrite history as he presided over a politically sensitive ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops.
"Any attempts to hush up these events, distort, re-write history are unacceptable and immoral," Putin said at a Jewish museum in Moscow. He is conspicuously staying away from the main events in Poland in a gesture laying bare sharp divisions with the West over the war in Ukraine.