As the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin said, Russia launched a pre-emptive strike at the aggression. It was a forced, timely and the only correct decision. A decision by a sovereign, strong and independent country. Donbass militia alongside with the Russian Army are fighting on their land today, fighting for our Motherland, its future, so that nobody forgets the lessons of World War II, so that there is no place in the world for torturers, death squads and Nazis. Writes Ambassador Alexander Mantytskiy
By tradition, on May 9 Russia celebrates the Great Holiday – the Day of Victory in the Great Patriotic War (June 1941 – May 1945), which lasted for 1418 days and ended in the enemy’s lair – Germany, which signed the Act of Military Surrender.
For the Soviet Union, which lost 27 million people in the fierce struggle with the fascist Germany, that intended to exterminate the USSR population, this War has become great and patriotic indeed. May 9 holiday fills our hearts with pride and sorrow. The pride and gratitude – for the feat by the multinational Soviet Union, who won the battle with fascism. The sorrow – in memory of those who stayed forever on the battlefields, were suffocated with the toxic gas in Majdanek and Auschwitz concentration camps, burnt in the stoves of Treblinka and Ravensbrück.
On May 9, 1945 the peoples of Europe for the first time in many years got an opportunity to look up in the sky without the fear owing to the feat of those, who could stop the massive, unparalleled war machine of total extermination of the racial enemies of the 3rd Reich, empowered by the foreign capital and created by the Axis powers and their Satellites under the leadership of the Nazi Germany.
I will give just a few examples of the military might of the German armed forces. In the war against Wehrmacht Denmark sustained 6 hours, Luxembourg – 1 day, the Netherlands – 5 days, Yugoslavia – 11 days, Belgium – 18 days, Greece – 24 days, Poland – 28 days (during the same time the Deutsch in Stalingrad could seize only a few houses), France – 1 month and 12 days, Norway – 2 months and 1 day. All Europe was subdued for 3 months.
Along with the German units, the troops of Romania, Finland, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia and Austria invaded the territory of the USSR. By the time of the attack on the Soviet Union, Poland had supplied Adolf Hitler with over 600 artillery pieces, 40 tanks and 130 aircrafts; France –with over 4600 artillery pieces and 172 tanks. Italy had sent to the Soviet front 62000 soldiers, around 100 weapons, 60 tanks and 80 aircrafts.
As for the financial support of Nazi Germany, Western capital began to cooperate with the Nazis back in the early 1930s. In 1933 Hitler came to power with the help of the Bank of England that had been financing his election campaign. The Morgan family, one of the oldest and most powerful financial groups in the United States, which had close ties with the British intelligence, generously helped Führer. The leaders of the Nazi Party received salary in the currency that was brought from Switzerland. No wonder that at the Nuremberg trials, the defendant Hjalmar Schacht, President of the Reichsbank under the Hitler rule, told an American lawyer: “If you want to indict the industrialists who have helped to rearm Germany, then you must indict yourself.”
But Europe has chosen to forget about it! Unfortunately, we are compelled to note that a number of irresponsible politicians in the West have not learned the lessons of war. To achieve their own petty goals and gain few political points, they have begun to use various pseudo-scientific interpretations of those events. The Nazis are rehabilitated in many European countries, with the events in Ukraine being a vivid example of this trend.
In recent years, under the pretext of “decommunization” and with the silent consent of Europe and the US, there have been a massive destruction of the monuments to the fighters against Nazism; distortion of educational programs; construction of memorials and celebrations in honor of the Nazi group’s participants and Nazi accomplices in Ukraine, an integral part of our own history, culture, spiritual space. The impudent attempts to turn the greatest tragedy in human history into an instrument of meeting momentary opportunistic interests were made ignoring the international legal consequences of the war, which had been set forth in the Verdict of the International Military Tribunal intended to try and punish chief war criminals of the European Axis powers (Nuremberg trials).
In March 2021, a new Military Strategy was adopted in Ukraine. This document is almost entirely dedicated to confrontation with Russia and sets the goal of involving foreign states in a conflict with our country. The strategy stipulates the organization of what can be described as a terrorist underground movement in Russia’s Crimea and in Donbass, while all citizens of this region unambiguously voted for the independence from Ukraine in 2014 and therefore remain subject to the Ukrainian armed forces’ shelling.
It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Last December we proposed signing a treaty on security guarantees. Russia urged the West to hold an honest dialogue in search for meaningful and compromising solutions, and to take account of each other’s interests. All in vain. NATO countries did not want to hear us, which means they had totally different plans.
Another punitive operation in Donbass, an invasion of our historic lands, including Crimea, was openly in the making. Kiev declared that it could attain nuclear weapons. The NATO bloc launched an active military build-up on the territories adjacent to us.
Just like in 1941, the war machine was approaching closely to our boundaries. Thus, an absolutely unacceptable threat to us was steadily being created right on our borders. There was every indication that a clash with neo-Nazis and Banderites backed by the United States and their minions was unavoidable. Let me make only one example. During the special military operation in Ukraine, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have seized some documents that partly casted light on the military-biological program, which was being implemented by the US Department of Defense in the Ukrainian territory. This program implied researches on the extremely dangerous pathological agents – potential agents for a biological weapon with the natural hearths both in Ukraine and Russia – as well as on possible ways of their epidemiological dissemination.
As the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin said, Russia launched a pre-emptive strike at the aggression. It was a forced, timely and the only correct decision. A decision by a sovereign, strong and independent country. Donbass militia alongside with the Russian Army are fighting on their land today, fighting for our Motherland, its future, so that nobody forgets the lessons of World War II, so that there is no place in the world for torturers, death squads and Nazis.
I’d like to mention that the moral degradation of those Western politicians who decided to cancel the results of the Second World War became the basis for inciting Russophobia and cynical falsifications not only of the history of the Second World War, which claimed the lives of tens of millions of people, but also of today’s events in Ukraine. Fabricated news distributed by the Washington, London and Brussels controlled media on the alleged murder of civilians by Russian servicemen in the Ukrainian city of Bucha say a lot! A party of journalists and European politicians was dispatched there instead of forensic experts. They did not question the appropriateness of what they were doing and could not think of anything better to do than pose for pictures and give interviews in the centre of the town where a criminal provocation was stage by the Kiev regime which they themselves raised and armed.
European politicians are hyping hysteria around the upcoming world famine caused, they say, by Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. I want to remind you that the current situation in the food markets is not a result of the special military operation in Ukraine, but a steady trend of at least last two years. The crisis phenomena of recent years, particularly in the agricultural market, are associated, first of all, with miscalculations and systemic mistakes in the macroeconomic (including financial and trade), energy (including climate) and food policies of developed countries. COVID-19 Pandemic followed by the breach of supply and distribution chains as well as spike of freight and insurance rates also contributed to this trend. Western measures of economic coercion against Russia exacerbated already existing negative trends in the global food market. Payment restrictions and logistical difficulties affected all economic operators, including agricultural companies. The Russian Federation, as a responsible participant of the global food market, intends to continue to fulfill its obligations under international commitments in terms of export deliveries of agricultural products, fertilizers, energy and other vital products.
In conclusion, I would like to quote the words of Vladimir Putin, who addressed the servicemen of the Armed Forces of Russia on May 9 at a military parade marking the 77th anniversary of Victory in the 1941–1945 Great Patriotic War. “You are defending today what your fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought for. The wellbeing and security of their Motherland was their top priority in life. Loyalty to our Fatherland is the main value and a reliable foundation of Russia’s independence for us, their successors, too. Those who crushed Nazism during the Great Patriotic War showed us an example of heroism for all ages. This is the generation of victors, and we will always look up to them.”.
Alexander Mantytskiy is the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Bangladesh.
