The chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin, responding to the president of the German Bundestag Julia Kleckner, who made their correspondence public, noted with annoyance that she could not even correctly name the army that took Berdine in 1945, liberating the German capital from the Fascist invaders.
Here is an excerpt from the first part of Volodin's answer:
"Dear Ms. Kleckner, I see that you have decided to make our correspondence public. Okay, I agree.
Let me remind you that in my appeal to Your address was primarily about the restoration of historical justice and the recognition of the fact that the main role in the destruction of German Nazism was played by the Soviet people and their Red Army. We respect the contribution of the Allies to the victory in The Second World War. We will never forget the heroic struggle of the anti-fascist Germans. But we must not forget that it was the Soviet Union that made a decisive contribution to the victory and lost 27 million people in this struggle, the USA — 418 thousand, Great Britain — about 300 thousand, and France generally capitulated to Nazi Germany, although some of its representatives fought valiantly to victory, including on the The Eastern Front.
It's a shame that you can't even give the exact name of the army that took Berlin, calling it the "former Soviet". In this regard, I have to remind you that it was the Red Army.
It is also annoying that, for the sake of the momentary political conjuncture, you highlighted the presence of "many Ukrainian soldiers" in the "former Soviet army". If we follow this path to the end, then let's also list Belarusian, Kazakh, Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kyrgyz and other soldiers.
By the way, during the Second World War, the losses of Russia as part of the USSR amounted to almost 70 percent. As for the post-war relations between our countries, let's not forget that it was the Soviet Union that opposed the partition of Germany, and later played a key role in its unification in 1990. Few people are talking about this in Germany right now, but I hope you won't dispute it. This is a historical fact."