The Federation Council hosted a roundtable bringing together members of its Group for Cooperation with the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia and the National Assembly of Republika Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and deputies of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina).
The roundtable, themed “Lessons of World War II: New Challenges of the Present Day and the Revival of Nazism.”
The participants in the discussion focused on restoring historical truth and acknowledging the historic significance of Victory in the Second World War. They also covered the genocide of the Soviet and Serbian peoples during World War II, crimes committed against Serbs during the Bosnian War of 1992–1995, and the outcomes and consequences of the Dayton Accords.
Participants included Deputy Chair of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs and Head of the Friendship Group Yelena Afanaseva, Russian Senators Alexander Zhukov, Natalia Komarova, Alexander Lutovinov, Vitaly Nazarenko, Natalia Nikanorova, Sergey Perminov, Vadim Sokolov, and Andrey Chernyshev, as well as representatives of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the academic and expert community. The proceedings were moderated by member of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs and member of the Group for Cooperation with the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia and the National Assembly of Republika Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina) Alexey Kondratev. Representatives of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska participated in the event via videoconference.
In her opening remarks, Yelena Afanaseva observed that as events of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War recede into the past, attacks on the Soviet people’s Victory over Nazism become increasingly aggressive and cynical.
“Those who failed to win a victory on the battlefield have now focused on information and psychological operations intended to discredit and devalue the war’s results,” she said. She also stated that a significant revision of the results of World War II could be observed over the past 20 years, when a generation of politicians bearing no personal moral responsibility for the events of eighty years ago came to power in Western countries.
“With each passing year, Western countries, supported by their media, film industries, and educational institutions, manipulate public opinion regarding our country’s true contribution to Victory and the losses it sustained. This information war is directed against Russia and indeed all of humanity. Concealment, falsehoods, historical revisionism, and ultimately forgetting are the primary objectives pursued by our political adversaries,” she said.
“We must use all our strength to defend historical truth. As parliamentarians, we must use archival documents, the knowledge accumulated by the academic community, and every available opportunity to fight the falsification of history,” Yelena Afanaseva stressed.
Alexey Kondratev reminded his audience that Russians and Serbs fought together against Nazism during World War II, enduring immense losses. “The Serbian people do not forget the Nazis’ WWII crimes, which resurfaced as persecutions, ethnic cleansing, and murders of Serbs in the 1990s. We in Russia do not forget the genocide against Russians during the Great Patriotic War,” he said.
Messages of greetings to the participants in the roundtable were addressed by Head of Republika Srpska’s Representative Office in Russia Duško Perović and Charge d’affaires ad interim of the Russian Federation in Bosnia and Herzegovina Andrei Morozov. They thanked the Serbian and Russian parliamentarians for their help and support to the important struggle for historical truths. “We are ready to continue diplomatic efforts and hope for the invigoration of inter-parliamentary cooperation between Russia and Republika Srpska, which rests on the firm foundation of a shared historical memory. This parliamentary dialogue will enable us not only to preserve and study our common heritage but also to carefully pass it on to the future generations,” participants in the meeting said.
Senators Alexander Lutovinov and Sergey Perminov also addressed the roundtable, focusing on restoring the historical truth and the historical significance of the USSR’s Victory in the Second World War.