MOSCOW, May 5 /TASS/. A war, which some European Union countries, have declared on WWII memorials are a source of great concern and Russia will be resolutely opposed to these vandal acts, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexey Meshkov said on Thursday.
"Regrettably, today we are facing incessant attempts to falsify history and use the WWII theme as an instrument of exerting information pressure on our country," Meshkov said.
"A campaign against monuments to Soviet citizens, who died in the fight against Nazism, has been unleashed in a number of European countries, including Poland. We are going to actively oppose that policy," the Russian diplomat stressed.
A fresh act of vandalism was committed at a memorial cemetery of the Red Army officers in Wroclaw, Poland, on the night to April 25. It was the sixth case of desecration of Soviet war memorials in the territory of Poland since the start of 2016.
"Poland continues its cynical and immoral campaign against Soviet memorials and burial places," the Russian Foreign Ministry said then.
"We demand that Warsaw take exhaustive measures to find and punish the criminals; immediately restore the monument to its original look and make formal apologies" the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
"We would like to remind the Polish side once again of the need to strictly comply with its commitments to protect Russian memorials that are enshrined, among other documents, in the Russian-Polish Treaty on friendship and good-neighborly relations signed on May 22, 1992. The Polish side has no right to ignore the treaty’s provisions," the Russian Foreign Ministry stressed.
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Russia "is convinced that all these incidents are the direct consequence of an aggressive ‘historical policy’, which Warsaw is pursuing at a state level. It is brought down to equalizing the Soviet and German totalitarianism and putting all the blame for Poland’s tragedies and misfortunes in the 20th century on Russia, including the responsibility for unleashing WWII, as well as creating myths about the history of anti-Soviet and anti-communist movements," the Russian Foreign Ministry went on to say.
"One of the main arguments, which Poland has been actively using in recent days and which is absolutely absurd, is that the Red Army Victory in 1945 replaced the fascist yoke with more than half a century-long Soviet occupation," the ministry stressed.
"The absence of an adequate reaction of the Polish authorities to the systemic desecration over Soviet memorials indicates their disregard for the memory of people who gave their lives for the freedom and independence of the Polish people," the Russian Foreign Ministry went on to say.
It recalled that more than 600,000 Soviet soldiers and officers had died for the liberation of Poland from fascism. "Ignoring this fact is simply immoral! We hope that Poland, which positions itself as a country respecting Christian values, is aware of that," the Russian Foreign Ministry stressed.