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Russia calls on European Council members to take measures to stop ultra-nationalists

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Russia and many other countries have long been sounding the alarm over condoning attempts to revive the ‘brown plague'

VIENNA, May 06. /ITAR-TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called on all members of the European Council to take resolute measures to stop ultra-nationalists and abandon double standards.

“Russia and many other countries have long been sounding the alarm over condoning attempts to revive the ‘brown plague',” Lavrov said on Tuesday at a meeting of the Committee of Ministers of the European Council. “Every year at the United Nations General Assembly, a big group of authors proposes a resolution that urges to prevent the heroization of the Nazis and their accomplices. Most of our Western partners have been consecutively refusing to support this resolution, referring to the necessity to respect the freedom of speech. They use the same pretext to block similar resolutions at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),” the foreign minister noted.

“Now, after the tragedy in Odessa, after desecration of Jewish cemeteries by fascist mobsters, it is no longer possible to hide behind the protection of the freedom of speech,” the Russian minister stressed. “All members of the European Council must take decisive measures to stop ultra-nationalists. There is no justifying those who condone the ideology and practice of fascism. There can be no justification even if they are politicians enjoying the patronage of enlightened Western democracies. It is high time to abandon double standards,” Lavrov noted.

“Just remember that in the heat of February's confrontation in Maidan, NATO defense ministers and the alliance’s secretary general were saying Ukraine’s armed forces must not interfere with the political process, insisting on the army’s neutrality,” he noted. “Now, Brussels and Washington are saying that the Kiev regime’s so-called ‘counter-terrorist operation’ is legitimate, since the state enjoys the monopoly on the use of the army. But the fact that this army has been ordered to fight side by side with neo-Nazis against its own people is beyond comments of representatives of the United States and the European Union," the foreign minister stressed.