Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at a wreath laying ceremony at the memorial plaques in the Foreign Ministry building dedicated to the 77th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, Moscow, May 6, 2022

Friends,

According to tradition, today we are conducting a ceremony dedicated to the most sacred holiday in the history of our country: Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War.

By tradition, we honour everyone who gave their lives for the freedom and independence of our country and Europe and for delivering the entire world from the Nazi threat.

We honour those who fell on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, the victims of the genocide of the Russian people and all other peoples of the Soviet Union, the victims of the Holocaust and the prisoners in concentration camps. The feat of the Soviet soldier is immortal.

Foreign Ministry employees made their contribution to this Great Victory. Many of them did so at the cost of their lives. Their names are immortalised on these walls. We will not forget those who contributed to a common effort on the diplomatic front. This is a major part of the result achieved through the selfless feat of our people.

We must always remember the lessons of history. Even more so since the West is trying to delete these glorious chapters from history and cross out everything that has been accomplished, and not just to equate the victors over Nazism with criminals, but to make us the main culprits of that war, to whitewash Nazism in every possible way, and to encourage Nazi manifestations in modern Europe. We can see this in the Baltic States and Ukraine, where neo-Nazism and new manifestations of anti-Semitism are flourishing under the current Kiev regime with the connivance of the collective West.

A propaganda war has been unleashed against the Russian Federation and our people, against any Russian who happens to be in any European, Western or any other country. This is a manifestation of outright racism (this is another form of discrimination, which is now being brought to the point of absurdity), when at the personal level they begin to instill hatred for everything that is connected to the Russian Federation. You can see it yourself.

No “punishment” or sanctions can break the will of our people or the Russian leadership which aims to uphold the historical truth and the legitimate interests of the Russian Federation, and to prevent direct threats to our security, culture or history from being created on our borders (as has been done for many years now). All this is now at stake, including the future of the world and what this world will be like. Will it be a unipolar world under the full “command” of the United States (as Washington wants it and as all Western countries have agreed), or will it be fair and democratic.

In a concerted effort with the overwhelming majority of the countries, we stand for this. Our efforts rely on the UN Charter, an organisation that was created as a result of the Second World War, rather than some speculative constructs like the “rules” invented by the Americans and imposed on everyone else. The ideals of justice and the sovereign equality of states enshrined in this document are especially relevant today. Those who do not recognise equality and who want to impose their dictate on the world are trying to rewrite these ideals.

We highly value our ministry’s contribution to the efforts designed to ensure Russia’s foreign policy interests in this difficult period.

I express my sincere gratitude to all of you for your work, and I want to congratulate you on the upcoming Victory Day.

My special words of gratitude go to our dear veterans who continue to be in our ranks and are passing their invaluable experience on to the next generations.

God bless you.

Happy holiday!