Why in the world would he even consider referring to it as a mistake? This egomaniac thinks he can do no wrong. Much like politicians and 100% of repuKKKes in the field. NEVER admit a mistake, even if you honestly think it was....which I don't think he does.

What did he lose? His citizens still think he's a shirtless god. Get serious world. Hitler didn't think invading Poland was a mistake either. These jack asses are immune to honest self reflection.

But the Poles rejected that option, and with Britain and France not willing to offend the Poles, Stalin just accepted Hitler's offer of half of Poland (where most of the Belorussians and Ukrainians lived at that time period). It was was offer Stalin could not refuse, he did NOT even have to attack, all he had to do was be neutral till it was clear the Germans had defeated the Poles and then move into the area Hitler had given them.

Worse, there appears to be an understanding with the Poles. The Poles gave standing Orders to their troops to fight to the Russian lines and surrender AND not to fight the Russians at all. You do NOT give such an order unless you can rely on an understanding that the troops would be intern only for a time period, ready to be fight again later.

Now, the Russians did intern the Polish troops, and segregated the Officers from the Enlisted Ranks (This is PERMITTED under the Geneva Convention). Stalin seems to have treated the enlisted ranks with good care, they later fought with the British army on the Western Front and with the Soviet Army on the Eastern Front.

Side note: Notice I mentioned the enlisted ranks were treated well. It was the commissioned officers (and other people of Poland's 1 % ) who ended up being shot in Kaytn Massacre. This is typical of Stalin, he killed anyone he though MAY oppose him, but saying that, that did NOT mean Stalin would have been to bad an ally of Poland if the Poles had offered him such an alliance. Stalin had read "Mein Kampf" and knew who Hitler was after and knew sooner or later he had to fight Hitler and if kept in check by the fact Poland had its own army in 1939, most of the terror he was known for, Poland could have avoided. In 1944 when the Red Army moved into Poland, Poland had no army except he one fighting for the Russians under Russian Officers AND the Polish Troops fight under British command (and never permitted back into Poland). Thus Poland had no check on Stalin in 1944 and 1945, but could have had a check, they own army, in 1939.

Thus the Poles surrendered as many troops to the Russians as they could, but given they had to SURRENDER as oppose to fighting along side, they leadership could be removed and was removed by Stalin. That removed the Polish Army as a check on Stalin and with that removal, come 1945 Stalin could do with Poland as Stalin saw fit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

The Poles pulled some nasty crap at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, including taking advantage of the ongoing Russian civil war to claim control of a huge chunk of land populated primarily by Ukrainians and White Russians which had been parts of Ukraine and Belarus within the Russian empire. The Russians even fought a war to try and reclaim the land in 1920, but couldn't mount an effective invasion because of the continuing civil war.

Cold War era history books vilified the USSR for attacking with Germany because that vilification fit well with the western geopolitical worldview of the day, but the reality doesn't necessarily fit the perception. When the USSR invaded "Poland", they were actually seizing Ukrainian and Belarussian territories, full of Ukrainians and Belarussians, that Poland had seized 19 years earlier without the consent of the people who lived there. The Polish government had also begun using its military in the region to enforce "Polonisation", by making the Russian and Ukrainian languages illegal in education and government, banning cultural practices that weren't Polish, seizing vast chunks of land and giving it to Polish settlers, and evicting Belarussian and Ukrainian peasants from their lands and homes so that Poles could take them over. There was no term for it back then, but today we'd call that Ethnic Cleansing and recognize it as a crime against humanity. This is also why the Polish forces collapsed so quickly during the invasion. Much of the population in eastern Poland considered itself occupied and oppressed, refused to offer any kind of aid or assistance to the Polish forces when the invasion began (even acting to undermine them by blowing up bridges and rail lines), and the population generally considered the invading Soviet's to be liberators.

The Polish portion of the RibbenTrop-Molotov Pact specifically drew the line along the previous Belarussian and Ukrainian borders, allowing the USSR gain control of those areas from Poland and rejoin them to the rest of their people.

The fact that little of the Polish territory invaded by the USSR was returned to Poland after the war attests to that. The Nazi/Soviet Polish dividing line laid out by the pact roughly defines todays current border between Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. Although these areas were "Poland" before the Second World War, today they are regarded as unquestionably Ukrainian and Belarussian. Even though the USSR's decision to invade is mostly seen as acceptable and proper by objective modern historians, they still get vilified over it in the popular mythos simply because it's Russia, and the fact that they staged the invasion with the Nazi's generally relegates it to "unforgivable sin" status for many people. Many military and political historians have pointed out that, if the USSR had simply waited until after the Second World War ended to annex the territories, nobody would have cared or complained about the move (well, the Poles might have, but nobody would have paid much attention to their complaints). It was solely the Soviet cooperation with the Nazi's that tarnishes the annexation.

Between 1954 and 2014 who provided administrative, infrastructure, utilities, and other support to Crimea? Those kinds of things are often considered investments. Did you, Mr. Pooty Poot, ever think about negotiating a "buyout" of Crimea rather than a military takeover? Or was it more a case of why pay for it when you can get it for free using brute force as necessary?

I guess models crossing the border too many times get the ire of Russia . in either stay in Crimea or stay out