Top Russian MP blasts West for ignoring Yatsenyuk’s ‘pro-Nazi’ statement
The head of the State Duma’s foreign relations committee is warning that re-writing history under the guise of freedom of expression may see some absurd versions of World War II events.
“If the ‘new freedom of speech’ prevails in regard of the WWII very soon everyone would think that Auschwitz and the whole of Europe had been liberated by the US – and Obama’s granddad,” MP Aleksey Pushkov wrote in his Twitter microblog.
Если победит "новая свобода слова" о второй мировой,то скоро все будут считать,что Освенцим и всю Европу освобождали США - и дедушка Б.Обамы
— Алексей Пушков (@Alexey_Pushkov) January 17, 2015
His outburst was prompted by a recent television interview by Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk who described the events of the Second World War as the “USSR’s attack on Ukraine and Germany”. In reaction a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin said the Ukrainian Prime Minister had the right to say what he deemed appropriate because of his right to freedom of expression.
Pushkov’s tweet echoes last week’s statement by his Upper House colleague – the head of the Federation Council’s Committee for Foreign Relations Konstantin Kosachev. The senator called Yatsenyuk’s position on WWII history a blasphemy, a provocation and an attempt to render direct support to fascism.
“Ukraine and its current leaders have stood by this position for some time. We are talking about the desire to rewrite the history of the Second World War. Saying the Ukrainian PM is practically putting himself into the position of a Nazi ally attempting to negate the decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal,” Kosachev noted.
The senator said Ukraine lost five million lives during the war with Germany and 2.5 million Ukrainians were taken to Germany as forced labor.
The Russian Federation Council demanded a firm denunciation of Yatsenyk’s words by the international community and foreign parliaments as it insulted the memory of the war victims and also the dignity of those who fought in the war to liberate the world from the Nazi threat.
