Radoslaw Sikorski - the speaker of the Polish Parliament and that nation's former foreign minister - was forced to apologize after claiming that he overheard Vladimir Putin in 2008 suggest that Ukraine should be divided between Russia and Poland, reports GHN based on RT.
A bombshell report published by Politico Magazine over the weekend called "Putin's Coup" alleged that Sikorski heard that the Russian president told Donald Tusk, then the Polish prime minister, that Poland should "become participants in the divide of Ukraine" during a Polish delegation's 2008 visit to Moscow.
"He wanted us to become participants in this partition of Ukraine... This was one of the first things that Putin said to my prime minister, Donald Tusk, when he visited Moscow," Politico's Ben Judah quoted Sikorski as saying following an interview that formed the basis of the Sunday article.
"He (Putin) went on to say Ukraine is an artificial country and that Lwow is a Polish city and why don't we just sort it out together."
"We made it very, very clear to them - we wanted nothing to do with this," Sikorski went on.
On Monday, Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said that, if Putin did suggest as much, then that would be "scandalous."
On Tuesday, however, Sikorski found himself in a scandalous situation and had to respond to multiple accusations that he made up the conversation between Putin and Tusk. The Russian president's spokesman labeled the alleged remark as "utter nonsense," and Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told Russia's Gazeta.ru the report "looks like total tripe."
Responding to a mounting backlash, Sikorski said over Twitter that the interview with Judah was "not authorized" and that "Some of the words have been over-interpreted." However the Politico journalist was fast to remind Mr. Sikorski that in the US members of the press do not "authorize" interviews. Judah also said to the Polish broadcaster TVN24 that he was "not sure what Sikorski had in mind" when he said some of his comments had been "over-interpreted."