Russia calls on the Ukrainian and Polish authorities to prevent barbaric acts and damages to Soviet war monuments and military burials, Deputy Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Consulate Department Alexei Utkin said on Monday during his speech at a meeting of the Federation Council’s Committee on Foreign Affairs.
“The Russian Foreign Ministry together with the Defense Ministry and other agencies and organizations concerned continues paying special attention to the issues of preservation and support of Russian and Soviet military burials abroad that have a historical and memorial importance to Russia,” he said.
“[We] have managed to considerably advance in strengthening of the international legal base for the military memorial cooperation recently,” Utkin continued. “Meaningful consultations on military burials were carried out with the Chinese side, a project of full-format agreement on military burials was prepared for study by the partners and the issue of signing corresponding agreements with Bulgaria was set into motion.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry “continues striving for understanding by Lithuanian and Estonian partners of the need to sign intergovernmental agreements in the military memorial sphere.”
“We are closely monitoring the state of Soviet military burials on the territory of Ukraine and calling on the Ukrainian authorities to clearly state inadmissibility of the current barbaric acts, take corresponding measures for a speediest and objective investigation into all corresponding circumstances and punish those responsible,” the diplomat stressed.
Special attention is being paid to these matters in Poland, he said, due to adoption of amendments to Poland’s law “on prohibition of propagation of communism and totalitarianism.”
“The Foreign Ministry has worked out a set of measures of a systemic character approved by the Russian president to counteract Poland’s hostile policy in order to prevent further damage to our monuments and cemeteries on the territory of this country,” Utkin noted. “At present, the Foreign Ministry together with other agencies started implementation of practical actions in the specified area.”