Comment by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on a recent statement by Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban

On October 27, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in his speech on Szabadsag (Liberty) Square in Budapest that the monument commemorating the 80,000 Red Army soldiers who perished liberating the city from Nazi invaders was “a memorial to the victims of the Soviet occupation.”

Such statements flagrantly distort the historical truth and the events of World War II, the results of which were formalised in the decisions of the Nuremberg Trials. We would like to remind everyone that Hungary, a close ally of Hitler during the Horthy era, was actively involved in the division of Czechoslovakia and in the Nazi aggression against Yugoslavia. On June 27, 1941, it joined Nazi Germany’s war against the Soviet Union at its own initiative, and Hungarian troops took part in mass crimes against civilians and Soviet prisoners of war in the occupied territories.

The Red Army liberated European nations from the Nazi plague and brought peace and freedom to them. But today some countries are trying to distort this fact, withhold the truth about the key role played by the Soviet Union in Victory over Nazism, hush up some capitals’ historical responsibility for war crimes and whitewash the governments of Nazi accomplices.

We will continue to firmly stand up against such falsification attempts.