Russia open for publication of WWII archives - top diplomat

MOSCOW, January 21. /TASS/. Russia is open for publication of WWII archive materials, Acting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated on Tuesday during the session of the Russian International Affairs Council. According to Lavrov, it is necessary to base approaches to the history of the Second World War on real historical facts and archive materials. "Russia is unprecedentedly open for their publication and for the general public becoming acquainted with these archive documents," he said. The acting minister pointed out that the some states had already reported negatively on the preparations for the 75th anniversary of victory in the Second World War. "I think that this issue will be of serious importance in the academic and practical work of the Russian International Affairs Council in the upcoming year," Lavrov said. "We will use the entire expert and analytical potential of the council to avoid politicization of this issue and to leave history to historians, to avoid attempts to rewrite the history of the Second World War and its outcomes, and to avoid attempts to cast a shadow on the heroes of the war, the liberators of Europe." A number of Western states have begun to criticize Russia’s role in the Second World War in the run-up to the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory in the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). Namely, the Polish and Latvian parliaments have approved resolutions placing equal responsibility for the start of the war on the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Russian Foreign Ministry stressed that the truth on the outcomes of the Second World War is documented during the Nuremberg trials and cannot be revised. Read more