MOSCOW, May 10. /TASS/. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said it was important for her to come to Moscow to pay tribute to soldiers who died in World War Two. She said as much at a news conference following talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"I came to Moscow during a difficult moment for German-Russian relations," Merkel noted. "But for me it was important, together with the Russian president, to pay homage to those who perished in World War two on the 70th anniversary of the Victory."
The German Chancellor recalled that she laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier earlier on Sunday. "I want to say that, as the German Chancellor, I bow to the millions of victims of the war unleashed by Nazi Germany," Merkel noted. "We will always be aware of the fact that the peoples of the then Soviet Union and Red Army soldiers accounted for the greatest number of casualties in that war."
"I am thinking about the residents of besieged Leningrad who died of hunger and malnutrition, about the millions of peaceful civilians subjected to torture and killed, about concentration camps prisoners and prisoners of war," she went on. "May I remind you about the crime of the Holocaust, which must and will serve as a warning to us, Germans."
"Let me also mention the fact that Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and others Red Army soldiers liberated Berlin and, together with the Western Allies, liberated Germany from the Nazi rule," Merkel said.