LITHUANIA, May 8 - On 8 May—the day of commemoration of the victims of World War Two—flowers were laid on behalf of Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė at the Paneriai Memorial and at the monument to Taras Shevchenko, a writer of the Ukrainian national movement.

‘Today, we are paying tribute to all the innocent victims of the war, as well of as of the horrific crime that accompanied it, the Holocaust. For Lithuania and many Eastern European countries, the war did not end on the 8th of May 1945. In Lithuania, it continued in the form of an active armed resistance to the Soviet occupation. After the killing of freedom fighters and their supporters, and after the deportation of a large part of Lithuanian society, the armed struggle was replaced by the resistance of the country’s population, which took various forms’, said Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė.

According to the Prime Minister, the free world that is not indifferent to the victims of the World War Two must not turn away from Ukraine’s request for help lest it should scar its conscience in the future. 

‘World War Two is unforgettable shared tragedy of an enormous scale. However, we have witnessed for many years now how the memory of this war is being turned in Russia into a resource for the myth of imperial power, where the Soviet Union is not seen as an aggressor, and the division of Eastern Europe by Stalin and Hitler is conveniently overlooked. This long-term process has resulted in an unprovoked criminal war in Ukraine’, said the Prime Minister.

According to the Prime Minister, the same way as the crimes of the World War Two were judged, and their perpetrators and organisers were brought to justice, it is important not to forget about the victims of the war in Ukraine and seek justice and personal accountability of the perpetrators for the war crimes and crimes against humanity.

 

Photo by Alfredas Pliadis