Poland Raises Collective Eyebrow

Prime Minister Vladimir Rasputin yesterday commemorated the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 by pointing out that, although the Soviet Union may also have inadvertently invaded Poland in accordance with the agreement it secretly made with its good chum Hitler, it was forced to do so by Britain and France.

"Had Britain and France not been so eager to sell Czechoslovakia down the river in 1938 by signing the Munich Agreement, World War Two would quite simply never have happened," smiled Mr Rasputin, in a brief respite from crossing out large chunks from a history book and writing his own copious notes in the margin. "Comrade Stalin was loudly telling the whole world that Hitler was absolutely crapping himself and would certainly have resigned immediately, if they'd only had the guts to stand up to his feeble armed forces - which we knew all about, having trained them on our territory for fifteen years or so."

Mr Rasputin went on to explain to the somewhat surprised citizens of Gdansk how Stalin was only restrained from taking on the Nazi war machine himself by the unfortunately-timed, and entirely accidental, execution of most of his own officers.

"As it is, our armed forces only burst into Eastern Poland in order to save as many Poles as possible from the murderous onslaught of our splendid Nazi allies, " he suggested. "As for the so-called Katyn massacre - which even horrified the Nazis when they discovered the mass grave containing the corpses of 20,000 Polish army officers - this was almost certainly an early outbreak of deadly swine flu, which was fortunately contained by the swift humanitarian actions of uniformed Soviet medical experts."

If only Britain and France had declared war on Nazi Germany in 1938, argued Mr Putin, all of Russia would have been mobilised to help them to defeat the evil fascists.

"Unfortunately, by the time Britain and France did declare war on Nazi Germany a year later, Comrade Stalin had signed the Ribbentrop Pact with Hitler, putting him in a bit of an embarrassing position," he sighed. "Even so, he really wanted to help - but unfortunately, the newly-promoted generals who were tasked with the invasion of Germany were holding their maps the wrong way up, and attacked Finland instead. It took the sudden, unannounced Nazi blitzkrieg which swept across our borders in 1941 for anyone to actually remember where Germany was."

Meanwhile, Poland's purple-faced president, Lech Kaczynski, is today said to be still attempting to pick his jaw up off the floor.