Russian Ambassador: Sane Germans Don't Want Confrontation with Russia

EISENHUTTENSTADT /Germany/, June 22. /TASS/. Sane Germans do not want a confrontation with Russia, while Moscow remains ready to talk with anyone who is willing to engage in equitable dialogue with it, Russian Ambassador to Germany Sergey Nechayev said.

"Unlike many Western politicians, citizens do not want a confrontation with our country," he told Russian journalists during a commemorative event on the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 (the Eastern Front during WWII where the former Soviet Union fought against Nazi Germany) in the city of Eisenhuttenstadt in eastern Germany.

These people, in his words, remember the good years, when the countries had mutually beneficial cooperation and partnership, and want to build these bridges up.

"On our part, we never burned any bridges and are ready for equal partnership-based cooperation with anyone who wants the same: on the basis of equality, without ultimatums, without pointing fingers," he stated.

In the early hours of June 22 eighty-five years ago, in 1941, German warplanes struck Soviet airfields along the country’s western border and German troops launched a massive invasion of the former Soviet Union. The majority of Soviet citizens learned about the war at 12:15 a.m. when People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov addressed the nation on the radio.

After the war, the Soviet Union did not have a special commemorative day dedicated to the start of the war. It was not until 1992 that a resolution of the Supreme Soviet of Russia designated June 22 as the Day of Remembrance for the Defenders of the Fatherland, and in 1996, President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree establishing the current name - the Day of Remembrance and Mourning.