Putin’s Room with a View

sopot090409.jpgAn interesting detail picked up by the Financial Times:

It’s hard to get a straight answer in Moscow about exactly whose idea it was.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, attended a meeting of world leaders in Poland last week, commemorating the start of the second world war in 1939. So far, so good. But where did he get a hotel room? In the resort town of Sopot, in the Charles De Gaulle suite, with sea view, of the beachfront Sofitel Grand hotel. Seventy years ago, this was known as room 226, the very same room in which Adolf Hitler stayed to oversee the invasion of Poland.

The strange symbolism – gleefully highlighted in the Polish blogosphere – was all the more jarring as a war of memory erupted amongst the ceremony’s participants.