British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s tribute to Poland for not surrendering to tyranny during World War II drew a rebuke from Russia, which blamed the United Kingdom for the conflict.

“[T]o describe things in a way that effectively equates the actions of the USSR to Hitler’s aggression is absolutely unacceptable,” an official at the Russian embassy in London protested.

Russia maintained that the United Kingdom “connived in the Nazis’ aggressive policies” by acquiescing, under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, to Adolf Hitler’s annexation of Austria and western Czechoslovakia in the lead-up to the invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. The embassy’s complaint is emblematic of Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent allegations that Western leaders have supported fascist movements to undermine Russian influence.

“I think the immediate message is for consumption at home,” Gary Schmitt, an expert in strategic studies at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “Putin has made a living off of Russian nationalism.”

Johnson touched a nerve by recalling that the Soviet Union invaded Poland just weeks after Hitler’s attack had begun, pursuant to a secret pact between the totalitarian regimes.

“As Poles defended their country against the Nazi onslaught, Soviet forces attacked them from the east, trapping Poland between the hammer of fascism and the anvil of Communism,” Johnson said in a video released Saturday, as world leaders prepared to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the war. “Yet the Polish people never succumbed to tyranny.”

The prime minister’s reminder of Russia’s invasion of Poland flies in the face of Putin’s portrayal of the Soviet Union as a liberating force that rescued Eastern Europe from Hitler’s ambition to "get more space for Aryans,” as Dmitry Polyanskiy, a Russian diplomat at the United Nations, put it last week.

In parallel, Putin, in response to anti-Soviet or anti-Russian sentiments, has accused the governments of former Soviet vassal states of indulging “open neo-Nazism."

“Russia still denies its big role in starting WWII,” a Central European diplomat told the Washington Examiner. “Victory in WWII is the foundation of Russia’s identity today and the foundation of Kremlin’s ideology. If Kremlin’s narrative is being challenged, then they perceive it as a direct threat to their rule (which, of course, is not).”

Russia’s commitment to burnishing the Soviet Union while denouncing Hitler has led to some odd rhetoric.

“In the Soviet ideology, which was also totalitarian of course, everybody was equal,” Polyanskiy told reporters Friday. “It is an ideology in favor of liberty, in favor of making people free. Very many people will say that is questionable, but still the ideology is very much different. That is why we always oppose this false starting point that these two regimes were equal.”

Those remarks were one installment of an extended public relations campaign around the origins of the Second World War after Polish officials declined to invite Russia to Sunday’s commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the invasion of Poland. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier stood alongside U.S. Vice President Mike Pence at a Sept. 1 ceremony in Warsaw.

The Russian mission to the European Union suggested that it was "bizarre" for Poland to host a “festive commemoration” of the beginning of the war with the countries “whose connivance prompted [the] invasion," naming France and Great Britain.

But Hitler launched that invasion a little more than a week after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in which "Russia and Germany divided Poland,” as the Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano recalled.

“So you might think the Poles would be a little irked,” he told the Washington Examiner.

It’s not old history alone that troubles the Poles. “We feel threatened by our eastern neighbor, meaning Russia,” Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz said last month in New York. “The United States is a key state in NATO alliance. We attach great importance to our security, therefore we cooperate in military field.”

That partnership might have driven some of Russia’s irritation with Poland. “Putin has shown no interest in any kind of rapprochement with the West,” Carafano said. “And so, he just maintains a strategy of pushing back — particularly at anyone who is working more closely with the Americans.”