MOSCOW, October 21. /TASS/. Russia’s State Duma has passed a bill banning the proliferation or public display of symbols and emblems of the organizations that have cooperated with the Nazis in the past or deny the results of the Nuremberg Trials.
The bill that was adopted in the second reading also introduces sanctions against those who encroach on its provisions. “Our objective is to become the center of an international antifascist movement that is called upon to rebuff in a most powerful manner the revenge-seeking forces, neo-Nazis and radical nationalists who are rising their heads now not in Ukraine only,” Duma’s deputy speaker Sergey Zheleznyak said.
“The events taking place in Ukraine are unfolding at the connivance of the governments and public quarters of many Western countries and big a number international organizations, including the ones that ascribe themselves to the sphere of human rights protection,” he said.
Zheleznyak called attention to the endorsement of ideology of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA), a paramilitary force of the World War II era, notorious for the extermination of Jews and ethnic Poles, as the state ideology of the nation, which lost more than 5 million peaceful civilians during the war. “The UIA had 139 types of execution of civilians and its masterminds took pride in it,” he said.
Zheleznyak recalled that October 14, the date of foundation of the UIA, has been declared Fatherland Defender Day, a national holiday.