Official Belarus offended
and Russia have not been invited to Germany to attend commemorative events marking the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald and Dora-Mittelbau concentration camps, DW reports.
The reason is Russia's war against Ukraine.
Earlier, the administration of the Buchenwald and Dora-Mittelbau Memorial Foundation informed the consular missions of Russia and Belarus that their presence at the events was undesirable.
Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the foundation, called even the idea of possible participation of Belarusian or Russian officials in the commemorative events unbearable, recalling the death of former Buchenwald prisoner Boris Romanchenko as a result of the Russian shelling Kharkiv.
twitter/Stift. Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora
According to the Foundation's administration, civil society representatives were invited to the commemorative events instead of officials from Russia and Belarus.
Manfred Huterer was summoned to the Belarusian Foreign Ministry in Minsk yesterday and handed a note of protest.
The note says that “the inadmissibility of insulting the memory of the victims of the Belarusian people during the Second World War and tens of thousands of Belarusian prisoners of concentration camps” and that the refusal to invite officials of the republic can not be justified “instantaneous or opportunistic However, the administration of the Buchenwald and Dora-Mittelbau Memorial Foundation, however, stressed earlier that commemorative events honor all victims of concentration camps, including Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian prisoners.
Read also: Europe imposes additional sanctions on Belarus
Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko gives full support to the Russian occupiers. In particular, it opens access to military and civilian infrastructure. It is from the territory of Belarus that rocket attacks and bombings of Ukrainian cities, as well as invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops are being carried out.
.
