June 22 is Day of Remembrance and Grief

Today, on the 85th anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War, the CSTO PA Secretariat staff paid their respects to the millions of war victims and defenders of besieged Leningrad by laying a wreath and flowers at the Motherland Monument at the Piskarevsky Memorial Cemetery.

Sergey Pospelov, Executive Secretary of the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly, emphasized the importance of respecting historical truth.

The day before, a meeting of the 70th session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of Belarus and Russia was held in Brest under the chairmanship of Vyacheslav Volodin, during which a statement was adopted on the genocide of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

The text of the document notes that in order to preserve the memory of the millions of Soviet citizens who were victims of Nazi criminals and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War, the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation adopted the Law on the Genocide of the Belarusian People and the Federal Law on the Commemoration of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

"It is important that such laws be adopted in all countries. The war was fought by a multinational people. If they take away our memory, they will take away our sovereignty tomorrow. We need to fight for the preservation of our memory and the immortalization of the heroes who have made our lives possible. This is the only way for our country to have a future. Otherwise, we risk losing our country. It is no coincidence that we have adopted this statement and are appealing to other parliaments. This is also important because neo-Nazism is on the rise," said Vyacheslav Volodin.

Before the meeting, Vyacheslav Volodin, Speaker of the State Duma of the Russian Federation and Head of the Parliamentary Assembly, and Igor Sergeenko, Chairman of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus, paid tribute to all those who died during the Great Patriotic War by laying flowers at the Sorrow Memorial in the Brest Fortress.