This is the Guardian.

Hi, I'm Matthew Luxmo.

I'm a correspondent based in Ukraine for the Wall Street Journal.

And I'm the author of the Guardian Long Read titled,

Pulse Apart, The Bitter Conflict of a Nations Communist History.

The article is about the way that Poland's history and in particular its communist legacy

had at the time become a flashpoint with Russia, which was seeking to bolster the legacy of its role

in fighting fascism in World War II and later as it describes it liberating Eastern Europe

from fascism. I grew up in Poland and I always remembered as a child walking past these

gargantuan communist monuments in Warsaw called monuments of gratitude. They were in many ways

an embodiment of Moscow's abiding influence in the region and there was a growing push to get rid

of them that was in turn an evidence of the extent to which the mood in Poland had changed.

When I began to report from Russia as a journalist and cover the annexation of Crimea in 2014,

I saw how memory of World War II was being harnessed as a kind of symbolic foundation for Russia's

actions in Ukraine, justifying the sham referendum that led to Crimea's annexation as kind of a way

to protect Russian speakers from what Moscow called the Nazis ruling Ukraine.

Very much the narrative that the Kremlin is using to justify the full scale water taking place today.

What we're seeing at the moment is this campaign by Russia to, as it would put a defend

its role in World War II which Russia believes is undermined by the West or not recognized to the

extent that it should be, it's reached really dangerous levels today. The themes that were covered

in this article I think explain in many ways why this narrative was growing so entrenched in

Russia and why the state was so keen to roll it out because in many ways it would be used much

...