MOSCOW, August 5 /TASS/ The United States is trying to hush up the tragedies of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which is impossible, Russian State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin said on Thursday.
"I have no doubt that the barbarity and overproportion of what was done is obvious to the US authorities. But instead of right comprehension of history, they want to bury it in oblivion," Naryshkin told a round table meeting on Thursday.
The meeting devoted to the 70th anniversary of nuclear bombardments of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by US planes took place at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO).
Naryshkin said the interests of peace and security were not the root cause behind the US behavior. It is a matter of "national prestige", he explained.
"The incumbent US authorities are not trying to conceal the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is impossible, but the hypocrisy and cynicism of the US leaders who ruled the country at that time," Naryshkin said.
"Their behavior is casting a shadow over the modern US policy, which has certainly inherited the ideology of exclusiveness; immunity from mistakes and arrogance of power," the speaker of the lower house of Russian parliament said.
"But the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will never sink in oblivion," Naryshkin went on to say.
"Remembering that is no less important than remembering the atrocities committed by the Nazis and Japanese militarists. An illusion of impunity may lead to very grave consequences," the Duma speaker said. That is why, he explained, the parallel processes of distorting the WWII history and increasing NATO’s aggressive potential are so dangerous.
"The West’s stake on the use of force and neglect for human lives led to hundreds of thousands of innocent victims in (the former) Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Now the previously peaceful Ukraine has also joined this list," the Russian lawmaker stressed.
According to the United Nations, about 7,000 people have died in Ukraine’s civil war over the past 18 months. Other sources put the number of victims at tens of thousands, Naryshkin said.
This year, Japan will commemorate the 70th anniversary of nuclear bombardments of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that claimed the lives of over 450,000 people. Memorial events devoted to those tragic days will take place on August 6 and 9.