MOSCOW, June 15. /TASS/. The United States and the European Union should be grateful to Russia for victory over Nazism, Cuban Ambassador to Russia Emilio Losada Garcia said on Monday, blasting sanctions imposed against Russia over Ukraine at the presentation of the book "Raul Castro" written by Castro's long-time friend Nikolay Leonov.
"This event takes place against the background of two anniversaries that are of great importance for all Cuban people — the 70th anniversary of Soviet victory over Nazism and the 55th anniversary of restoration of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union," the diplomat said, seizing an opportunity to pay tribute to almost 27 million people killed in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.
"Today, when some people in the West are trying to misrepresent the victory and revive Nazism, Cuba acknowledges a huge role of the Soviet Union," he continued. "Without it, the humankind would have possibly seized to exist," the ambassador said.
"Instead of imposing unfair and immoral sanctions against Russia, the US and the EU should have rendered honors to it for the feat that cannot be parallelized," said Emilio Losada Garcia.
He also marked the role of aid the Soviet Union had been offering since the diplomatic relations were restored in 1960. "For all these years we had been getting substantial and unselfish aid from the Soviet Union especially in the first most difficult years of the revolution".
Speaking about the book presented on Monday, he said it was not only biography of the Cuban leader, but a story about "common and courageous people, who had carried out major political, economic and social changes just 90 miles off the US, the story of brotherhood of two people — Raul Castro and the author of the book, Nikolay Leonov, that has continued for already 62 years".