CONGRATULATIONS OF RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR IN CANADA OLEG STEPANOV ON VICTORY DAY

Dear veterans, compatriots, friends!

Let me cordially congratulate you on the 78th anniversary of the Great Victory!

This holiday is sacred for all of us. The courage and endurance of the generation of victors allowed our nation to retain its independence, saved the humanity from the Nazi brown plague. The Victory was achieved at terrible cost -millions of our citizens gave their lives fighting the invaders, died in occupation, under bombardment, in extermination camps. No family in Russia has been immune to the sorrow of war.

The Red Army’s feat of breaking the backbone of the Nazi death machine in the battles of Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk and liberating Europe form the Nazi occupation will be forever etched on our memory. We praise home front workers for their selfless dedication, commemorate doctors and nurses’ wholehearted devotion to their duty and mourn those veterans deceased. Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten.

Cold War geopolitical processes drove a wedge between the anti-Hitler Coalition Allies, but we have never divided the Victory into “ours” and “theirs”. Russian people will always cherish the Canadian sons and daughters’ contribution to our common cause. This memory remains a connecting link in our two nations’ shared history.

The immortal feat of the Soviet people not only allowed us to defend our Motherland, but also laid the foundation for a new architecture of the world order based on equal cooperation of sovereign States and international law. Although decades separate us from those events, the present-day realities persistently demand that we must never fail to remember the lessons of history.

The Nazis followers and their henchmen are trying to raise their heads again. Now they threaten peoples of fraternal Ukraine, the Russians of Ukraine who became hostages of the Bandera-SS regime led by one of those who desecrates the memory of the War’s victims.

But we will help our brothers and sisters to get rid of this evil. All the goals and objectives set by the Russian leadership for the special military operation will be accomplished. This is the duty we owe to our heroic ancestors and to future generations.

Happy Great Victory Day!