Referring to a recommendation by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, the parliamentary press service of the Bundestag announced yesterday that representatives of neither Russia nor Belarus would be invited to attend its official ceremony commemorating the end of World War II on May 8. In a handout to Federal states, municipalities and memorial sites, Berlin’s Foreign Office advised against allowing representatives of Russia and Belarus to take part in such commemorative events. The reason given was the fear that Russia could “instrumentalize these events for its war of aggression against Ukraine.” Aside from its crucial role in assuring the defeat of Nazism, the Soviet Union suffered the highest casualties, 27 million people, of any country in the war.
Similarly, the European Parliament plans to pass a resolution omitting the Soviet role in defeating the German Wehrmacht, and instead plans to highlight the role of the U.S.A. and numerous European states, as French MEP Thierry Mariani indicated in a conversation with Russian daily Izvestia.
