Remembrance Day. Putin: It Was Soviet Soldiers Who Defeated “Evil of Holocaust”

The people of the Russian Federation will always remember that it was the Soviet military that overcame the evil of the Holocaust and achieved victory. In a statement by the Kremlin on the occasion of the Remembrance and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp prisoners by the Red Army, Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasized that “International Holocaust Remembrance Day is a sorrowful date of great moral and humanistic significance. In January 1945, the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, revealing to humanity the truth about the crimes of the Nazis and their henchmen, who exterminated millions of Jews, Russians, Gypsies, and other peoples. And we will always remember that it was the Soviet soldiers who crushed this terrible and total evil and won the Victory, the greatness of which will forever remain in world history,” said the Russian President.

Scandalous as it may seem, Russia was not invited to take part in the commemorative events in Poland. These days, Putin (pictured) is in St. Petersburg to mark the 81st anniversary of the complete liberation of the city, then Leningrad, from the German blockade, which the Russian president said should be considered “on a par with the Holocaust.”

“It is clear that the siege of Leningrad ranks among the most odious crimes against humanity, along with the Holocaust, the death camps, and the punitive actions of Nazi collaborators against civilians. The siege of Leningrad claimed the lives of more than a million people,” the Russian president emphasized. Putin then recalled that the siege of Leningrad lasted almost two and a half years (872 days, from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944 – ed.) and “was unprecedented in cruelty and cynicism.”