MOSCOW, April 18. /TASS/. The Russian diplomatic mission in Berlin has been told that Russian officials are not welcome at events marking the 79th anniversary of the liberation of concentration camp prisoners, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing.
"Our embassy in Berlin has received notice that Russian officials need not come to commemorative events on the occasion of the 79th anniversary of the liberation of prisoners of death factories," she said.
According to Zakharova, Moscow "regards this provocative attack as the latest move by the German side aimed at further twisting history, painting the course and outcome of World War II in an anti-Russian manner." "We believe that this is the destruction of historical memory and the truth about World War II on the part of official Berlin, which is clearly behind such an attitude, encouraging it," the diplomat pointed out.
She also pointed out that Russian officials "over the past decades have made it their life’s work to preserve the memory of the Great Patriotic War and World War II."
"They invested their time, worked, fulfilled their duties, in line with their civic duty to preserve the historical memory, to defend every monument in Europe. Is it them they don't want to see? The people who carried out military and historical work to preserve memorials, graves? They do not want to see the people who assisted the civil initiative Immortal Regiment, which takes place all over the planet, helped the public, which expressed a desire to hold such events, proved to local authorities the need to support these actions to preserve historical memory?," Zakharova noted.