MOSCOW, June 21. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has written an article timed for the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in German, because this issue is very important for Germany, which was the first victim of Nazism, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday when asked why Putin had decided to write this article in German.
"We know that Germany itself was the first victim of Nazism. It was infected with Nazism and then attacked the Soviet Union. This issue was very important for Germans and for Russians. In the dialogue with Germany the president has more than once made a decision to address it personally to explain his vision. Why in German? Because everybody in Germany speaks German," Peskov explained.
The Kremlin spokesman said that the article would be published "in Russian, in German and in other languages" on the presidential website. He avoided briefing the media on the contests of the article.
"You will be able to see and read it yourself. Let us not anticipate events," he said.
Peskov stressed that June 22, the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow, was a "sacrosanct day for any Russian and for any resident of the post-Soviet space."
Earlier, Peskov told TASS that Putin was working on an article timed for the 80th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War. In the program Moscow.Kremlin.Putin on the federal TV channel Rossiya-1 it was announced that the Russian leader had prepared such an article to be published in a German periodical.
In 2020, Putin wrote an article that was published in National Interest magazine on June 18 in English under the title The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II. On June 19, it was uploaded to the Kremlin's website and published in the Russian daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta in Russian. In that article Putin not only mentioned quite a few historical facts, but also shared his family' war memories. Part of that publication was devoted to the lessons of World War II and the questions of international cooperation.