Ashraf AboArafe
In the year marking the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory over Nazism, the Russian Foreign Ministry has issued a searing report titled “Regarding the actions (and inaction) of the authorities of Italy, Germany and Japan, resulting in the destruction and falsification of history, justification of fascism and its accomplices.”
The report — published on the official MFA website — voices deep alarm over what Moscow sees as a dangerous distortion of historical truth and a deliberate erosion of the legacy of the struggle against fascism.
Across the globe, voices are asking: have the lessons of that dark era truly been learned?
Public conscience, both in nations friendly and unfriendly to Russia, watches uneasily as leaders and political elites attempt to rewrite the past — to whitewash war criminals, glorify collaborators, and recast the horrors of World War II in a false moral balance.
The Ministry warns that this “rewriting of history” has become state policy in certain countries, with the crimes of Hitlerism being silenced and the memory of Soviet sacrifice erased.
Particularly concerning, Moscow stresses, is the rise of revisionism in Germany, Italy, and Japan — the former Axis powers.
Germany, the report notes, has replaced historical reflection with a “false thesis of equal guilt,” minimizing the Soviet role in victory and ignoring millions of its victims. Even symbolic gestures — such as removing Russian and Belarusian ribbons from memorial wreaths — are cited as signs of “cold amnesia.”
In Japan, the report denounces the government’s “revanchist core,” seen in its reinterpretation of mid-20th century events.
In Italy, since Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s rise to power in 2022, Russia observes “a dangerous tolerance toward nostalgic glorifications of fascism,” pointing out that she has never made a clear and forceful condemnation of the ideology.
Most strikingly, Moscow highlights that Germany, Italy, and Japan have voted against Russia’s annual UN resolution “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that fuel racism and xenophobia.”
For the first time in history, the former members of Hitler’s Axis have openly opposed such a declaration — a decision that, according to Russia, raises “serious questions about the ideological direction of the modern West.”
As the 80th anniversary of victory dawns, Moscow’s message is somber:
“When memory fades, fascism stirs.”
And the world must decide — whether to remember, or to repeat.
