AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski
The Russian Foreign Ministry’s comment “on the desecration of a cemetery of Soviet soldiers and war prisoners in Gdansk” (source):
The Foreign Ministry is outraged by yet another hideous act that was committed against the Soviet memorial sites in Poland. Vandals left broken or damaged 23 stars on mass graves at a cemetery in Gdansk that holds the remains of some 3,000 Soviet servicemen, civilians and prisoners of war. Efforts are underway to eliminate the damage, and Russian diplomats are working with the Polish authorities.
We must point out that it was the heroic exploits of Red Army personnel that at the cost of many lives paved the way to the liberation of that city in the spring of 1945.
The Gdansk incident is yet another link in a series of thuggish attacks against our monuments at Polish cemeteries that we have been witnessing in recent years. We believe incidents of this kind result from Warsaw’s destructive policy to cleanse the country from any reminders of its liberation by the Red Army at the end of the Second World War and rewrite the history of what followed, while claiming to promote “decommunisation”.
The Foreign Ministry insists that this outrageous incident be investigated in all urgency, and the perpetrators held to account. We call on Poland to honour its international commitments and remind it of its moral duty towards the fallen heroes and victims of the war.
