Dear veterans, esteemed colleagues, friends,

 

First of all, I would like to offer heartfelt congratulations to the veterans who participated in the Great Patriotic War, those who selflessly worked on the home front during the hard war years and all those present, on the 70^th anniversary of the Great Victory. It is a great holiday, a great anniversary, and a guarantee of the continuity of our country and the bonds of time.

 

Speaking at a meeting of the Pobeda (Victory) Organising Committee on March 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that May 9 is a day of glory, a day of pride for our people, and a day of the utmost respect for the generation of winners. Our country played a key role in smashing Hitler's war machine and freeing Europe and the world from the madness of Nazism. It was due to the courage, heroism and self-sacrifice of Soviet soldiers and all the peoples of the former Soviet Union, who bore the brunt of the war, that Europe was able to embark on the path of constructive development and partnership. To us, the Great Victory will forever remain a source of national pride and a foundation for bringing up the new generation in the spirit of patriotism. We are all deeply indebted to the veterans. We bow to you.

 

We have never divided the Victory into ours and somebody else's. We have always praised the contribution of our anti-Hitler coalition allies, all those who fought against Nazism shoulder to shoulder in the name of truth and justice. On May 9, many heads of state and government, heads of international organisations and veterans from over 20 countries will be in Red Square. Military units from our partners in the Commonwealth of Independent States, as well as India, China, Mongolia and Serbia, will march together with Russian participants in the parade.

 

During these May days, we proudly recall the contribution to Victory made by our foreign service. Back then, as at all crucial moments in our nation's history, diplomats strove to fulfil their patriotic and professional duty to the end, including with arms in hand. At the very start of the war, militias from the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs engaged Nazi forces near Yelnya. A total of 237 staff members at the Commissariat voluntarily joined militias or were called up to the army. They had a glorious combat record, including participation in the defence of Moscow and Leningrad, the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Kursk, the liberation of Byelorussia and other combat operations. Over 300 Commissariat officers helped build fortifications to defend the capital. The names of our fallen comrades are immortalised on a memorial plaque in the Ministry's lobby.

 

The Ministry's veterans include 61 participants in the Great Patriotic War, nine residents of Leningrad during the siege, three inmates of Nazi camps, and 127 workers on the home front.

 

We pay tribute to our predecessors who, in those difficult years, did all they could to defend the country's foreign policy interests and create and consolidate the anti-Hitler coalition, and worked consistently to bring about the opening of the Second Front. A special focus was put on efforts to build the foundations of a fair postwar security architecture, which were crowned by the founding of the UN, the 70^th anniversary of which is being widely marked this year.

 

Unfortunately, as those events recede further into the past, the effect of the anti-Nazi vaccine, administered by the Nuremberg Trials, is beginning to wear off. Radical nationalist forces are rearing their heads, and Nazi ideas and values are being openly promoted in some countries, including those that claim to be model democracies. The attempts to falsify history, put victims and executioners on the same plane, and glorify the Nazis and their henchmen are outrageous. The aim of these actions – and President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly spoken about this – is obvious: to provoke historical and political phobias and pit entire countries and nations against each other in order to gain one-sided geopolitical advantages and achieve global domination. Russia will continue to stand fast against such attempts, which threaten the stability of the international order and the fundamental principles of democracy and human rights.

 

Full recognition of the results of World War II, as enshrined in the UN Charter, is imperative for all Member States. We will not allow the heroic deed of the victors over Nazism to be debased or the truth about the Great Patriotic War to be distorted. We will continue to fight racism, xenophobia, aggressive nationalism and chauvinism in all its forms. In December, a resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism, which was initiated by Russia and co-sponsored by a large number of delegations, passed by an overwhelming majority in the UN General Assembly. Today, at the initiative of Russia, our CSTO partners and China, a special session of the General Assembly to commemorate the victims of World War II will open in a few hours in New York.

 

Today, like never before, it is crucial to remember the lessons of that global catastrophe and the terrible consequences of faith in one's exceptionalism. Seventy years ago, the members of the anti-Hitler coalition succeeded in rising above their ambitions and disagreements, and joined forces to defeat a common enemy and eradicate a criminal ideology of hate. Today, it is critically important that we work together, if we want to effectively address the many challenges of our time. The fate of the world cannot be determined by a single state or a narrow group of countries. Genuine security can only be equal and undivided, and can only be ensured collectively, as enshrined in the UN Charter.

 

Dear friends,

 

On this important day, I would like to note the work of the Ministry's Veterans Council, one of Moscow's leading veteran associations and the organiser of numerous events designed to preserve the continuity of generations and the bonds of time. Our veterans continue their concerted civic efforts, make an invaluable contribution to disseminating the truth about the Great Patriotic War, and participate in numerous scholarly conferences, roundtables and exhibitions organised at the Ministry, the Diplomatic Academy, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and other venues. We bow to you for your untiring efforts to give our young people a patriotic upbringing.

 

The Ministry's leadership actively supports the initiatives of the Veterans Council and its chairman Vladimir Kazimirov in the noble cause of preserving the memory of our comrades, including the erection of a memorial plaque to the militia fighters of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs on the building in Kuznetsky Most Street last year and the efforts to uncover more Commissariat officers who were killed during the Great Patriotic War. Their names will be written on the memorial plaque in the Ministry's lobby. We are helping to realise your initiatives designed to commemorate prominent figures of Russian diplomacy, among other things, by naming streets in Moscow and other cities after them, marking the anniversaries of their births and publishing books about them.

 

Thanks to the Russian leadership's attention to the Foreign Ministry, last year, a presidential executive order was issued to raise pensions for the majority of diplomatic service veterans. For our part, we are doing all we can to mobilise available resources to provide support to all veterans without exception. In this context, we are especially grateful to our missions abroad.

 

Seventy years ago, the most devastating war in the history of humankind – a great, decisive battle, as our well-known author and war veteran Daniil Granin put it – came to an end. It is our sacred duty to remember the participants in that unprecedented struggle and take care of those who returned as victors and are still with us today.

 

Once again my best wishes to the veterans on this great holiday. I wish you good health, wellbeing and joy.

 

Happy Victory Day!