I am glad to welcome the organizers and participants of the International Scientific and Practical Forum “No Statute of Limitations”.
Today’s meeting is a logical continuation of a series of events aimed at preserving the truth about the Great Patriotic War. The focus of your attention is the generalization of historical experience and modern practice of organizing trials of Nazi criminals, including the recognition of the facts of genocide against peaceful Soviet citizens during the war years.
It is symbolic that the event takes place in the Leningrad region. The memories of the miraculously surviving prisoners of the Dulag-154 concentration camp located here are the clearest evidence of the inhumane crimes of the Nazi occupiers on Gatchina land. Numerous evidences of mass killings, torture, slave labor and other manifestations of misanthropic ideology and practice exclude any doubt that the events of that time should be regarded as nothing but the genocide of the Soviet people.
Unfortunately, immunity to the Nazi virus has seriously weakened in a number of European countries today. The situation in Ukraine and the Baltic States is particularly worrying. In general, the world community is increasingly faced with attempts to revise and distort the legal, political, moral and ethical results of the Nuremberg Tribunal.
It is gratifying that, despite unprecedented pressure from the “collective West”, our international partners and like-minded people continue to support Russia’s foreign policy initiatives, including at the UN. The CIS and CSTO documents define the facts of the expulsion and extermination of civilians by the Nazis and their accomplices as genocide of the peoples of the Soviet Union. Ensuring the inviolability of the Nuremberg legacy and uncompromising opposition to any form of glorification of Nazism will continue to be one of the absolute priorities of Russian diplomacy.
I wish you fruitful work and all the best.
