The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman is quoted as saying, “It is regrettable that the Berlin authorities responsible for providing for the security of the widely visited memorial complexes to the fallen Soviet soldiers had failed to take adequate measures to prevent malicious provocations, throwing a shadow over the policy of historical reconciliation of the peoples of Russia and Germany.” What actually throws a shadow over reconciliation between Russia and its neighbours is Moscow’s ongoing and loudly proclaimed untruth that the Red Army liberated those countries. In reality, at no point at all was any liberty involved. One savage totalitarian occupation regime, the Nazi one, was simply replaced by another savage totalitarian occupation regime, the Soviet one. Claiming that this transition amounted to liberty is profoundly offensive to countries which suffered under both occupiers, and for whom genuine liberty came only around 1990, with the slow-motion collapse and then sudden disappearance of the Soviet entity. The work of the Russian Foreign Ministry in its frequent articulation of such untruths, and not graffiti on a Berlin monument, is what casts a shadow over Russia’s bilateral relations with neighbours. Berlin authorities arranging for the graffiti to be cleaned off doesn’t really help, either – new graffiti will only appear in its place. What would help is if authorities in Moscow stopped claiming that its ushering of neighbours into Stalinist terror was a liberation. That would remove the motivation for graffiti.

Marzipan6 I would like to question Russia's authority press release on this very sensitive incident from a standpoint which is different from your Russophobic location. I have been to the Red Army memorial in the Tiergarten Park in Berlin. The memorial is impressive; it also has security cameras around it- especially in the rear areas facing the Park. In addition to the statue shown here, there are impressive array of Photographs showing all the destruction of both Germany and the Soviet Union between 1941-1945. It is also pertinent to stress that this is not the first time the memorial has been vandalised. Therefore, it is important question why has the Russian embassy in Berlin did not work closely with the German authority to ensure the sacred honour of this memorial site –especially since one should have expected that not all Germans have accepted their utter defeat in the hands of the Soviet Union? Russia and Germany are great economic partners and this incidence should be addressed in more discrete manner.

Marzipan6, coudn't possibly agree with you more! I wonder, though, how they allowed your posting on this "forum" :-) The censors have fallen asleep :))))

This text mentions the second Croatian president Stjepan Mesic, and says that he "had been personally involved in combat operations against Nazi Germany in World War II,". First, I want to say that Stjepan Mesic was 6 years old boy when World War II started in Yugoslavia. He spent WW2 with his family in refuges in Orahovica and later in Hungary. I would recommend Russia Today to do better research next time before posting such claims. Second, in the late 1980ties and early 1990ties Stjepan Mesic was member of the pro-fascist HDZ party and was second in importance and decision making only to the Croatian president Franjo Tudjman. The party was openly nostalgic to the fascist regime of Ustashe (fascists puppets of Hitler and Mussolini) of the so called "Independent State of Croatia", which was a puppet state created by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. During the 1990ties when Yugoslavia was torn apart by extreme nationalists Stjepan Mesic said that Croats won the WW2 twice - first in 1941 and second in 1945! He said that "Croats won a victory on April 10th 1941" (when the fascist Independent State of Croatia was formed) "as well as in 1945" (when the anti-fascists prevailed and the Socialist Republic of Croatia within Yugoslavia was formed). He also wrote a book and entitled it: "This is how I destroyed Yugoslavia" but letter he renamed it into: "This is how we destroyed Yugoslavia". I suppose he renamed his book on orders from his foreign sponsors (Project NWO). Throughout his political carrier, especially after 1991 and civil war in Yugoslavia, Stjepan Mesic behaved like he had no firm ideological views and like he was schizophrenic - one day he would be extremely nationalistic and another day he would be antifascist. If that is "antifasicsm" than we are all doomed.