A notable date in history, January 30, saw a commentary from Alexander Venediktov, the deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, reach the RT DE newsroom. The high-ranking Russian official seized on recent statements by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) as an opportunity to remind the German side of historical events and facts.
Earlier, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskow had already commented on Scholz’s interview, which RT DE reported on. The German chancellor had drawn attention in an English-language interview by only and exclusively thanking the US for the Allied victory over the German Nazi regime and the reintroduction of democracy in post-war Germany.
Venediktov characterized the attitude expressed by Scholz as “hypocrisy.” He wrote: “We have been made aware of a statement by the outgoing German Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Olaf Scholz, which strikes us as hypocrisy. The German politician publicly stated that the United States freed Germany from fascism and helped it become a democracy.”
Venediktov went further in his criticism of Scholz: “By intentionally omitting the price the Soviet Union paid for the liberation of the world from Hitler’s accomplices, the Chancellor not only desecrates the memory of millions of Soviet citizens of various nationalities who fell in the fight against fascism, but also distorts the truth grossly.”
However, the one-sided and history-revising attitude of the Chancellor has not only an external political dimension, as it pertains to the international community’s remembrance, Venediktov cautioned the German government, in the context of Germany’s internal remembrance, not to neglect the overall picture: “The ignorance of the German leadership towards the history of their country not only offends the German people, who remember who really brought them freedom and independence.”
Venediktov concluded his commentary by offering to help the Chancellor with his remembrance by providing relevant source material: “We are prepared to provide Chancellor Scholz with archival data and newsreels from the war years. They document in detail all the facts that the West has been deliberately ignoring or pretending to forget lately.”
As of now, there is no statement from Berlin on the entire matter.