Poland hailed Russia on Sunday for the latter's admission over the weekend that former Soviet Union chieftain Josef Stalin had indeed murdered 20,000 Poles in the Katyn Forest during World War II. The Russian parliament passed a motion blaming Stalin for the massacre, on the eve of a visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. At the time, Russia blamed the Nazis for the massacre, and it was only a year before the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1990, that then Soviet head Mikhail Gorbachev admitted Stalin's complicity in the murders.

"This is a good step, and an important sign," Grzegorz Schetyna, the speaker of the Polish parliament said. "President Medvedev's visit will thus take place in a better atmosphere.”