MOSCOW, January 9. /TASS/. A top parliamentarian from the Russian Federation Council upper house of parliament urges European leaders to voice their position following statements by Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsennuk, who said the USSR attacked Germany and Ukraine in 1941.
“This is not just distortion of our common history. This is justification of Hitlerism and an insult to the memory of heroes and victims in fight against Nazism, with Ukrainians among them,” Konstantin Kosachev wrote in his blog.
“Will they swallow this? Will the ‘learned’ European politicians keep silent, once again pretending that nothing has happened?” the chairman of the upper house’s international affairs committee said, suggesting that perhaps even this will not make Yatsenyuk non-handshakable for European politicians.
“As it is not European values that has been indeed the issue all the time, not supremacy of law, democracy and human rights. It is about the interests of a group of European states willing to move their border as further east as possible. When the end justifies the means and history teaches nothing,” he said.
“When Islamic militants are killing in Paris, while Ukrainian ones burn people alive in Odessa - the reaction of Europe should be the same. Or this is a failure of European values under the pressure of political expediency. Will European leaders have enough conscience and wisdom not to keep silent? I would be glad to be mistaken, but I strongly doubt this. Let us wait and see,” Kosachev posted in his blog.
Speaking on German television on Thursday, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk said “We all remember well Soviet Union’s invasion of Germany and Ukraine”.