MOSCOW, July 2. /TASS/. Western countries have been substituting concepts and rewriting history in order to deprive Russia of its seat on the UN Security Council, Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Multilateral Human Rights Cooperation Director Grigory Lukyantsev said.

"Concept substitution is underway, despite the clear falsification behind the phrase, however, the idea of equal responsibility of the two so-called totalitarian regimes for unleashing WWII is being advanced," the senior Russian diplomat said at a news conference on a presentation of the third joint report by the Russian and Belarusian foreign ministries on the situation with human rights in individual countries, hosted in Minsk on June 30.

"Whenever the idea of `equal responsibility of the two totalitarian regimes’ is promoted, the place and role of the Russian Federation as a successor of the Soviet Union, including as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, becomes called into question, with all the ensuing consequences. That is, promoting this idea pursues the goal of trying to deprive Russia of its seat and role in the United Nations system, including raising the issue of stripping Russia of its permanent seat on the UN Security Council further down the road," he added.

Since 2022, a situation when Germany, Japan, and Italy vote against condemning the heroization of Nazism has been recorded at the United Nations, Lukyantsev noted. This, he argued, shows that the three countries "have not apparently relinquished ideas that, among other things, once led to WWII." "It is quite obvious to us that, at least as long as this situation persists, these states claiming the status of permanent members of the UN Security Council is not an option," he concluded.