Vladimir Putin must be invited to Auschwitz

In two weeks time, January 27, there will a commemoration at Auschwitz to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp by the Red Army. The Soviet Army arrived on January 27, 1945.

Auschwitz was the epicentre of the German genocide of European Jews, with about 1.5 million murdered in its gas chambers.

It seems that Russian President Vladimir Putin has not been invited to attend.

That cannot make sense and EU leaders must sit down with their Russian counterparts and use the occasion to talk to one another.

A commemoration at Auschwitz wihtout the Russian President being present is a nonsense.

February 2 will be the 72nd anniversary of the success of the Red Army at Stalingrad on the Volga. It was there that the Red Army put a defnitive end to Nazi Germany.

In five months, one week and three days there were 2,150,000 casualties on the Volga. Is that not reason enough for Mr Putin to be invited to the former German death camp on Polish soil?

Geoffrey Roberts in his edited verison of Marshal Georgii Zhukov's autobiography, 'The Marshal of Victory' points out that Zhukov was probably the most important general in the second World War.

But for Zhukov and his army when would Auschwitz have been liberated?