WASHINGTON, June 23. /TASS/. The Soviet people won over Nazi Germany in the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War because they were "stronger in spirit" and fought for the very right "to live freely and determine their own destiny sovereignly," Russian Ambassador to the United States Alexander Darchiev said during the Candle of Remembrance commemoration at the embassy.

The commemoration took place in the embassy's grand Georgievsky Hall to mark the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow, observed annually in Russia on June 22. At exactly 9:00 p.m. local time (4:00 a.m. Tuesday Moscow time, the hour of Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union), Darchiev addressed the participants from the podium, among whom were primarily diplomats, their family members, and invited compatriots.

"We won that terrible war because we were stronger in spirit and believed in the righteousness of the sacred duty to defend the Motherland from the brown plague (TASS - a Soviet-era term for Nazi ideology and its forces) in the name of freedom and independence, and the very right to live freely and determine our destiny sovereignly," the envoy noted.

"Today, on the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow, we remember those who 85 years ago were the first to engage the Hitlerite war machine, which unleashed upon our Motherland, together with its European satellites, the full force of evil and misanthropy," Darchiev stated.

He noted that "from the very first minutes of the invasion, the enemy encountered heroic and relentless resistance from the Red Army and the entire Soviet people - who, unlike other European countries that submitted to the Nazis, did not kneel but fought to the end, to the last cartridge and the last drop of blood, like the legendary defenders of the Brest Fortress".