Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Germany’s chancellor, Russia’s president defended the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which the USSR signed with Nazi Germany in 1939 to carve up Eastern Europe, in turn triggering the onset of World War II.

The

controversial comments by Vladimir Putin were reportedly made during a May 10 press

conference in Moscow alongside a visiting Andrea Merkel, who snubbed the Russian

leader by demonstratively arriving one day after the Russian capital staged its

largest military parade since Soviet days to commemorate the 70th

anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.