РУССКИЙ
20:05 09.04.2025 •
Photo: MFA
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview for the NewmTASS educational media project.
Moscow, April 9, 2025
Question: Mr Lavrov, thank you for finding the time for this interview.
This year, our country celebrates the 80th anniversary of Great Victory. I have participated in the competition with support from the National Centre for Historical Memory. While we in Russia cherish the memory of those who defeated Nazism during the Great Patriotic War, the West is attempting in every way to “forget” and distort our history. Is it worthwhile to “give them a shake” somehow?
Sergey Lavrov: We have sought to “give them a shake” for a number of years now. In fact, the tendency to cast a veil over history emerged long before the special military operation. There were active attempts to equate the winners and the vanquished and to undermine and smear the role of the Soviet Union.
Our contacts with German diplomats over at least the past seven or eight years increasingly revealed a conviction on their part – I am conveying what they tried to suggest, the implication – that they had paid everyone for everything and no longer owed anyone anything. That sounded an alarm bell.
And what we see right now is alarming indeed. Germany has openly opted for a remilitarisation by changing its Constitution. It will borrow €800 billion to carry out an arms programme within the next three or four years. The ideology of Nazism is increasingly coming to the fore in the Federal Republic, despite the constitutional bans and rulings of the Nuremberg Trials…
But this is not limited to Germany alone. The same is happening in the Baltic States that are just living on Russophobia. I think they can neither go to sleep, nor wake up unless they are animated by hate for Russia. There are also some other countries in this category. Generally speaking, we observe yet another “wave,” where Europe is again up in arms against our country. (Looking at some faces, one is tempted to say that they are baring their teeth like rats.)
Before the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, the Second World War, every global tragedy began with the Europeans launching an aggression. Cases in point are rife. Suffice it to recall the Napoleonic wars, World War I, and World War II. It is only after World War II, when Europe was weak, that the Americans emerged as leaders of the “free world.” So, it was their turn to start the majority of conflicts on this planet. Prior to the American period, however, Europe was the sole source of tragedy in the world.
During World War II, there was a number of countries, including Italy, Finland, and some others, which officially fought on the side of Adolf Hitler. Almost all other European countries, the so-called neutrals, contributed troops that participated in the fighting alongside the Wehrmacht. The French… Yes, there was a resistance movement in France. But, like in the majority of European countries, the official authorities in Paris obediently surrendered at discretion and lived on just as if nothing had happened. We will never forget the role played by the Resistance Movement in France. But it is just a solitary example. The official French forces took part in the fighting on the side of Hitler’s Germany, including in a number of punitive operations. There are numerous instances of this sort. Now an anti-Russian “wave” is rising and attempts are being made to accuse the Soviet Union of starting the war. Their aim is not only to put Joseph Stalin on the same footing as Adolf Hitler but also represent the former as the only one to blame for what had taken place. This is certainly a highly alarming sign.
What is there behind this? Germany is undoubtedly out to regain its erstwhile grandeur, with the old Nazi instincts breaking out at the genetic level as something that might come in handy in this regard.
As for the rest of European countries, some of them want to finally delete from history the pages of their national disgrace, collaborationism and connivance at the Nazis, while others regard the Nazi ideology as a new tool for keeping their positions on the European political scene. We will fight this.
Forgetting history, forgetting national spiritual and moral values, forgetting national roots has become one of the main causes of what we are witnessing in Ukraine. The nation is being encouraged to forget its Russian roots and what Russia has done to liberate and develop the huge territory that makes part of what is now Ukraine. The Americans and Europeans have taken advantage of a crisis in the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic to bring to power an openly Russophobic, Nazi regime that has declared a war on its own people. They seized power in an illegal coup, declared recalcitrants to be terrorists, and started a real war against them with the use of the regular army, air force, and artillery. The West has connived at this regime’s efforts to eradicate the entire Russian part of the history of these lands. But it was the Russians, namely Empress Catherine II, Prince Grigory Potemkin, and our other glorious predecessors, who developed these territories, built Odessa and other cities, as well as ports, factories and plants. The regime that came to power in a coup has decided to delete all this from the people’s memory so as to do obediently the bidding of its Western puppet-masters that always dreamt to turn Ukraine into a direct military threat to our country. We must fight against this.
We have promoted for years a UN General Assembly resolution against the glorification of Nazism. Each year, the overwhelming majority of states vote for it. Over the last couple of years, however, the West has meanly attempted to kill this resolution by submitting amendments that put Nazism on the same footing as what is going on within the framework of the special military operation. But this did not prevent the resolution from remaining on the General Assembly agenda. It was approved again by an impressive margin of votes. This will continue in the future, too. We do the same work at UNESCO and other international organisations, such as the CSTO, the CIS, and the SCO.
All these things are important for preventing the recurrence of a situation where a half of Europe or even the whole of Europe would again be collected under the standard of Nazism and neo-Nazism and committed against our country, as, properly speaking, it is happening today. They began by pumping Zelensky full of weapons for him to gain a full “victory,” to make Russia sustain a “strategic defeat” on the battlefield. Now, conscious that this will not work, they are saying that it is necessary to send their own forces to the “battlefield.” I am referring primarily to the French and the British, who are just obsessed with this.
I hope that there are people that have not forgotten the lessons of history. Many European leaders (there are increasingly more of them) are beginning to understand that this new attempt is a dead end and a disaster. I am confident that voters will make their choice as they go to the polls next time.
Our policy is aimed to prevent the sacred memory from ever disappearing from history and the minds of all generations, including the future ones. It remains unchanged. We are confident of our historical, moral and human righteousness.
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