[1] The bad conditions in these camps were known to public opinion in Poland at the time, as a number of Polish newspapers openly wrote about them, criticizing the government for not correcting the situation.

Others accused the Russian side of using these numbers to justify the Katyn massacre, the mass executions of Polish officers and intelligentsia in World War II.

[2] Polish historians always countered this by arguing that: (a) the number of POWs was very difficult to estimate accurately, due to the chaotic situation prevailing for most of the war, and (b) many Soviet POWs lost that status after they switched sides and entered units fighting alongside Polish forces against the Red Army, or were transferred to the Whites rather than the Bolsheviks.

Ekaterina Peshkova, the chairwoman of organization Assistance to Political Prisoners (Pompolit, Помощь политическим заключенным, Помполит),[10] was awarded an order of Polish Red Cross for her participation in the exchange of POWs after the Polish-Soviet War.

[11][12] During the memorial ceremony for the victims of the Katyn massacre on April 7, 2010, attended by the Russian and Polish Prime Ministers Vladimir Putin and Donald Tusk, Putin said that, in his private opinion, Stalin (whose refusal to obey orders from the Kremlin resulted in the Russian defeat against Poland in 1920) felt personally responsible for this tragedy, and carried out the executions of Polish officers in Katyn in 1940 out of a sense of revenge.

[15] In 2014, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs published further archival documents of International Red Cross and League of Nations missions that inspected the camps.