Moscow will resist efforts to falsify history and whitewash Nazism, the Kremlin has said
A meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Council of Heads of State in a narrow format at the Ala Archa state residence in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan © Sputnik
Russia intends to fight foreign cultural expansion against the members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Kremlin has said, as Moscow assumed a rotating one-year presidency of the bloc.
During its chairmanship of the organization, which includes many post-Soviet republics, Moscow intends to focus on enhancing the CIS role in the global arena, deepening economic integration, tackling threats to the security of its member-states, as well as cooperate along other tracks, according to the statement released by the Kremlin on Monday.
When it comes to culture, “an important line of work will be resisting external destructive influence” on CIS members, the statement read, adding that such erosive efforts could include “attempts to cancel the culture” of a particular people, or its contribution to the global heritage.
To offset such potential influence, Russia as CIS chair will support “measures to counter the falsification of history and attempts to rehabilitate Nazism, and to preserve the historical memory of the Great Patriotic War, including the genocide of the Soviet peoples.”
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The Soviet Union is estimated to have lost around 27 million lives during WWII, with approximately two-thirds of this number accounting for civilian deaths due to the policy deliberate extermination pursued by Nazi Germany on its territory.
Moscow officials have repeatedly raised the alarm about a resurgence of Nazi ideology in the West and in Ukraine, while arguing that “denazification” is one of Russia’s key goals in the military operation against the neighboring state.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has voiced particular outrage over a September incident in the Canadian parliament which saw the country’s MPs giving a standing ovation to a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator and SS veteran, Yaroslav Hunka. After facing international backlash, Canadian officials issued a public apology, and then parliament speaker Anthony Rota, who had invited the controversial figure, stepped down.
The Kremlin also said that Moscow intended to continue cooperation with CIS members to “protect, support and promote Russian as an international language.” Other plans include enhancing military cooperation, boosting CIS members’ financial sovereignty by using national currencies in bilateral transactions, and partnerships in the energy sector.
Russia will also seek to “minimize the negative consequences caused by the use of unilateral coercive measures that violate international law” by various countries, the Kremlin said, in an apparent allusion to the unprecedented sanctions the West has imposed on Moscow over the Ukraine conflict.
