VIENNA, May 9. /TASS/. Unidentified assailants desecrated the Soviet military cemetery in the Austrian town of Ebenfurth (the state of Lower Austria), the Russian embassy in Vienna reported on Tuesday.

"It has become known to the embassy that the Soviet military cemetery was desecrated in Ebenfurth. Unidentified vandals damaged the bas-relief on the monument to the soldiers who had lost their lives liberating Austria from Nazism," the embassy said in a statement posted on its Telegram channel.

The Russian diplomatic mission intends to inform the local authorities of the incident and send a note of protest to the Austrian Foreign Ministry, it said.

The Russian embassy will demand that "comprehensive measures" be taken to establish the circumstances of the incident, the culprits be brought to account, the memorial’s inviolability be ensured and it be preserved in accordance with the provisions of the state treaty for the re-establishment of an independent and democratic Austria dated May 15, 1955, the embassy said.

"Especially cynical is the fact that this villainous crime was committed around Day of Victory in the [Soviet Union’s 1941-1945] Great Patriotic War [against Nazi Germany]," the statement reads.