Russia to call on UN to recognize WWII victory as ‘heritage of humanity’

Russia will address the United Nations to declare victory in World War II as the ‘heritage of humanity,’ while also making the monuments to those who fought against the Nazis as part of a global memorial.

The speaker of the Upper House of the Russian Parliament, Valentina Matviyenko, shared those plans with UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). Russian MPs have already made the same offer to their colleagues in foreign parliaments, she added.

The call to recognize the victory against the Nazis as the ‘heritage of humanity’ and protect the monuments to WWII troops was formulated during the Livadia International Humanitarian Forum, which took place in the Crimea’s Yalta earlier this week and was attended by representatives of 50 countries.

The Black Sea resort was the venue of the historic Yalta Conference in 1945, during which Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, decided how the world was to be shaped after WWII.

Winston Churchill (L), Franklin D. Roosevelt (C) and Josef Stalin at the Yalta Conference. © Sputnik

During the Livadia event, Matviyenko promised that those proposals of the forum will be included in the draft resolution of the 74th UN General Assembly in New York in September.

The Federation Council speaker vowed that the parliament will to do everything to make sure “that no dirty hand will be allowed to destroy the monuments to those who died while protecting Europe; defending it from Nazis.”

She also decried the Western attempts to diminish the decisive role of the Soviet Union in the WWII victory, warning that attempts to rewrite history cause the rise of neo-Nazism in Europe and elsewhere.

The Western nations who fought Hitler’s forces together with the USSR also opted against inviting Russia to the D-Day celebrations, which are taking place this week to mark the landing of the allied forces on the Nazi-occupied Normandy coast in 1944.

On the weekend, the monument to Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov was brought down in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, becoming yet another WWII memorial demolished in former Soviet countries and Eastern Europe.

Zhukov prevented the Nazis from taking Moscow in 1941, before winning several other crucial battles and commanding the offensive on the German capital, Berlin, in 1945. In recognition of his contribution, he became the one to accept the German Instrument of Surrender, while the Russian people referred to him as the ‘Marshal of Victory.’

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