Russian Defense Minister Addresses First International Anti-Fascist Congress

Aug. 20, 2022 (EIRNS)—The First International Anti-Fascist Congress (in Russian) got underway this morning at Patriot Park outside of Moscow. “The Congress aims to provide a platform for defending the historical truth about the decisive contribution of the U.S.S.R. in defeating fascism during World War II, as well as to counter the spread of Nazi ideology,” the Russian Defense Ministry said on its Telegram channel.

The keynote address was delivered by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. “Today we are witnessing another vivid manifestation of the Nazi policy, when the Russophobic idea of banning all Russian citizens from entering the European Union is being actively promoted from high tribunes in Europe,” he said. Shoigu added that the fundamental principles of the world order and the legal and political evaluations of the Nuremberg Tribunal were increasingly ignored and revised by individual countries, in particular the Baltic States. “SS legionnaires’ marches have become traditional in Estonia and Latvia, with monuments and obelisks erected to war criminals. Nazi slogans and appeals are openly heard in the streets of Lithuanian cities.”

Shoigu noted that fascist regimes were established in a number of countries in Europe in the 1930s, but “The most radical and aggressive form was German Nazism.” He stressed that the National Socialists’ rise to power was due to their funding by international capital. “It is clear that the financial and economic co-operation between Anglo-American and Nazi business circles was a major factor leading to the Second World War, which cost humanity unprecedented human lives,” the minister said. EIR has documented the support of Bank of England Governor Montagu Norman in financing Hitler’s rise to power.

“Many people in Ukraine have not accepted the policy of the Kiev authorities to rehabilitate Nazism and incite hatred towards everything connected with Russia,” Shoigu went on.

“Official Kiev, has openly declared itself heir and successor to the cause of the bloody Ukrainian nationalists. The Verkhovna Rada [legislature] has proclaimed fighters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army as fighters for national independence. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, everything was done in Washington to turn Ukraine into the antipode of Russia. The promotion of legislation banning the Russian language, Russian media, Russian culture—everything related to our country—was encouraged”

he said. Those who refused to accept the Nazi aspirations of the Kiev regime were targeted by a “brutal punitive operation.”

At the end, Shoigu condemned attempts to rehabilitate and propagate Nazism and to glorify Nazi criminals and their collaborators as “inherently illegitimate and immoral.” Such efforts “are sacrilegious to the memory of those who liberated the world from this obvious and legally established evil. The fight against any manifestation of Nazism must therefore be uncompromising and comprehensive.”