"Unfortunately, there are more and more attempts to put under question history of the Second World War. And I'm saying that we should be aware of these attempts,” Alexei Pushkov, the Russian delegate in PACE, said at the assembly's winter session.
He added that Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s statement that Kiev “remembers about the Soviet invasion in Ukraine and Germany” was meaningless, as Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union during World War II.
Pushkov said that since Ukraine was a part of the USSR, the Soviet Union could not have invaded itself, while the invasion of Germany also made no sense, as Moscow played the key role in the liberation of Europe from Nazism.
"Russia was a leading member of the anti-Hitler coalition and in this respect its actions were justified, as well as the actions of the United States, Great Britain, French troops and so on. So to speak about [USSR invading Ukraine and Germany] means to rewrite the history of the Second World War to give support to the Third Reich, which is morally inadmissible," Pushkov said.
Ukraine Premier’s Pro-Nazi Version of World War II: USSR Invaded Ukraine, Germany http://t.co/PsoMzmbfQd #russia #ukraine #putin
— AMK Ultra (@AMKUltra) January 20, 2015
He went on to say that the Polish foreign minister’s statement concerning the Auschwitz concentration camp being liberated by Ukrainian soldiers did not “make sense outside of political provocation." He stressed that the Ukrainian military was a part of the Red Army that liberated Auschwitz, which also included Russians, Azeris, Armenians and all the nations of the Soviet Union.
"So, to single out one nation out of all of them for political reasons, in my mind, is ethically and morally unacceptable," Pushkov said.
Earlier on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that any attempts to revise Russia’s contribution to the victory in the fight against Nazism during World War II should be viewed as glorification of Nazi crimes.
Putin emphasized the importance of defending the truth about the events of the Second World War, so that the tragedies of the war would not be repeated in the future.
