Ambassador Alexander Darchiev Address at the Embassy reception in honor of the Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War
Your Excellencies Ambassadors, dear veterans, guests, comrades,
Thank you for accepting our invitation to celebrate together the Day of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. The greatest war in the history of humankind came to its end on May 9th 72 years ago. Our country, all nations of the Soviet Union, fought not only for the freedom and independence of Motherland, but also for the liberation of Europe from Nazi slavery and extermination.
The Nazi invaders, who conquered most European capitals, came to our country to murder, steal, rape and kill in concentration camps, arrogantly expecting an easy victory. But they turned to be wrong – Germans were stopped on the outskirts of Moscow, crushed in Stalingrad and Kursk, on all fronts from the Arctic to the Black Sea, and finally finished off in Fuhrer’s lair in Berlin. Hitler’s armies found their graves routed by the heroic and legendary Red Army that linked up with Allied forces on the river Elbe in central Germany.
In that victorious May East met West, accepting together the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich in Berlin. For this victory, that saved the world, the Soviet Union has paid a most terrible price – almost 27 million lives, 27 million lives of Soviet people, Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Kazakh, Armenians, Jews, Azeri, Moldovan and many-many others perished in battle or were lost in Nazi-occupied territories.
We will never forget and forgive the burned-down Russian cities and villages, the terrible blockade of Leningrad, those annihilated in Belorussian village of Khatyn and shot in Babi Yar in Kiev, tens of millions tortured and killed elderly, women and children, those gassed and burned in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. The memory of the heroes of that war, of those who did not live to see the great Day of Victory, will forever stay in our hearts.
We remember our allied friends, the Americans, the British, the valiant Canadians, who stormed the beaches of Normandy, liberated France, Holland and Belgium. We remember that the Arctic convoys, bringing supplies to the Russian North, originated in St.Johns and Halifax. We remember the courage of seamen and pilots, who cleared the Atlantic from Nazi ships and submarines, the courageous deeds by the European resistance fighters.
We are grateful to heroic people of great China, who suffered greatest losses in it’s heroic fight against invaders, to fraternal Mongolia that supported us during war years.
That alliance is called-for again today, when humanity is faced by the new absolute evil of international terrorism, spreading through its agents, like ISIS, medieval bigotry and intolerance, openly calling for extermination of all infidels. Now is the time to join forces, refusing the terrorists any breathing space, eradicating it like the Nazi beast, like 72 years ago. Tomorrow might be too late.
Dear veterans, please accept our warmest gratitude for the peace you won for us. Your words of wisdom and experience are required by the younger generation that has not witnessed the atrocities of war. Together we can stop those who try to rewrite history, to whitewash the Nazi and Nazi collaborators. Truth and justice are on our side.
As part of our good tradition, the Embassy staff and our children have prepared a small concert, trying to relate the high spiritual significance of Victory. Despite the war’s horrors, sorrows and suffering, good has defeated evil, love has triumphed over hate, light prevailed over darkness. We celebrate with tears in our eyes, remembering the fallen, wishing health and long-long years of happiness to the veterans, to those who served their duty at the home front and to the children of war, whose youth was brutally stolen.
Thank you for your attention.
