The Russian Orthodox Church and a major Russian Jewish association condemned violent attempts by Ukrainian nationalists in Lviv on Monday to disrupt Victory Day events.
Moscow, May 10 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Russian Orthodox Church and a major Russian Jewish association condemned violent attempts by Ukrainian nationalists in Lviv on Monday to disrupt Victory Day events.
May 9 is observed in Russia and other former Soviet republics as a day commemorating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
"It’s obvious that what has happened is a crime involving an encroachment on people’s right to express feelings that are more than respectable about those who perished," Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Department for Liaison between Church and Society of the Holy Synod, told Interfax-Religion, www.interfax-religion.ru.
Crimes of this kind "need political, moral and legal qualification," he said.
"It’s a well-known fact that in the regions that today make up the west of Ukraine there were many victims of both the Nazi and the Stalin regime, and, for that matter, victims of actions by some other European countries as well. But different interpretations of history and different orientations of historical memories don’t give anyone the right to illegal use of force against political opponents," Chaplin said.
He expressed hope that nowhere in the world "would disputes about history end up in pogroms, which must be completely removed from our life if we consider ourselves to be civilized people and heirs to Christian culture."
The Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia also slammed Monday’s nationalist riots in Ukraine and voiced fears of "complete rehabilitation of Nazism in Europe and in the world as a whole."
"We are extremely concerned about the fact that, on that day, Ukrainian nationalists staged mass fights in a bid to torpedo celebrations of Victory Day," the federation’s chief executive, Alexander Boroda, said in a statement sent to Interfax-Religion.
Nationalists were tearing ribbons of St. George (Russian symbols of military valor) and decorations off veterans’ chests and attacked Russian Consulate staff, "seizing and crushing with their feet a wreath that the diplomats were carrying to the graves of liberator soldiers," Boroda said.
"It is obvious that the revisionist policy on Ukrainian Nazi collaborators that has been pursued in Ukraine over the past few years finally asserted itself in the shape of yesterday’s events. It essentially amounts to the acceptance of the existence and practical implementation of the extremist and terrorist ideology of Ukrainian radical nationalism," he said.
Boroda said that, earlier, Ukrainian nationalists had limited themselves to hostile statements about World War II veterans. Today, however, "those groups have gone over from words to fists and violence," he said.
"We demand that the Ukrainian leadership, the United Nations and other major international organizations make proper assessments of the events in Ukraine on May 9, 2011. If there are no statements to that effect from Ukraine or the United Nations, one will be able to confidently speak of the complete rehabilitation of Nazism in Europe and in the world as a whole," he said.
He urged the international community and the Russian and Ukrainian governments "to make an appropriate moral assessment of the ghastly activities of Nazis and their accomplices during the war, and to make a clear assessment of revisionism."
