🕯September 3 marked #Russia’s Day of Solidarity in the Fight Against Terrorism. It was established in memory of the tragic events on September 1, 2004, when 334 people, mostly children, died in a terrorist attack on a school in #Beslan. #WeRemember

Combating the terrorism is one of #Russia’s key priorities. Especially, given the situation when thousands of civilians in the #Donetsk and #Lugansk People’s Republics, including children, had become victims of the barbaric actions led by #Ukraine Defence Ministry’s Intelligence Department and other special services. The Kiev regime call it "controlled terror".

These days, the law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation and the allied forces are making tremendous efforts to protect the civilian population and counter the terrorism.

🕯 June 22 marks the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow in Russia.

82 years ago, at 4 am, Nazi Germany perfidiously attacked the Soviet Union after a lengthy artillery barrage and without a declaration of war. Nazi forces launched attacks along the entire length of the Soviet border, from the Barents to the Black Sea.

This is how the Great Patriotic War began, opening one of the most tragic chapters in the history of our country.

Romania and Italy sided with Germany. Slovakia, Finland and Hungary joined them in several days later. The aggressors controlled the industrial potential and other resources of virtually all the continental European countries.

The bloodiest war in history lasted 1,418 days and nights and culminated in the Victory of the Soviet Union and its allies, and it entailed the complete defeat of Axis countries.

❗️ The Soviet Union accounted for 40 percent of wartime losses. Its casualties totalled 26.6 million war dead, including over 8.7 million killed in action. The Nazis deliberately exterminated 7.42 million people on the occupied territories.

#WeRemember how, after living through the war and despite certain disagreements, the nations of the world were united by a striving to prevent another monstrous conflict in the future and to avoid the mistakes of the past.

Unfortunately, Nazi ideology has proved resilient over the decades. They are using Nazi ideology once again for monstrous geopolitical experiments aimed at containing Russia. Collaborators who found refuge in the West after the war, Nazi criminals and their young followers are brandishing the banner of these ideas today.

🕯 The Candle of Remembrance memorial event has been held every June 22 since 2009. Everyone can honour the memory of the deceased with a moment of silence, light a candle and lay flowers at a military burial site or a Great Patriotic War monument.

#NoStatuteOfLimitations #Victory78

🕯 President of Russia Vladimir Putin is taking part in the events to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi siege.

The President laid flowers at the Landmark Stone monument at the Nevsky Pyatachok military-historical complex. From the first days of the siege, the Red Army fighters held back the superior enemy forces in that area, a small three-kilometre stretch of the frontline south of Leningrad, preventing the Nazis and their allies from approaching the city.

The President visited the Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery, where he honoured the memory of the fallen Leningrad residents and defenders of the city by laying a wreath at the Motherland monument. About half a million people are buried in mass graves at the Piskarevskoye cemetery. The words of poet Olga Berggolts, ”No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten“ are carved on the memorial wall behind the Motherland monument.

Leningrad is the only city in world history with a population of several million people that was able to withstand almost 900 days of encirclement. The siege by Nazi Germany lasted 872 days from September 8, 1941, to January 27, 1944. The ring was broken on January 18, 1943, and on January 27, 1944, a ceremonial salute was fired to mark the end of the blockade.

By that time there were no more than 800,000 inhabitants left in the Northern Capital out of the three million who had lived in Leningrad and its suburbs before the siege.

#Victory79 #WeRemember

🗓 On January 27, President of Russia Vladimir Putin and President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko took part in a ceremony for unveiling a memorial to the USSR civilians who fell victim of the Nazi genocide during the Great Patriotic War. The event is timed to the 80th Anniversary of breaking the Siege of Leningrad.

💬 President Putin: January 27 is one of the most important dates in our shared national history. On this day in 1944, Red Army soldiers completely lifted the Siege of Leningrad. A year later, in 1945, they liberated Auschwitz.

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For eight decades now, our pain for the victims, for the shattered destinies, and for everyone who endured incredible ordeals has not subsided. Our compassion is passed on from generation to generation and has #NoStatuteOfLimitation, just like the crimes of Hitler’s fanatics and their accomplices, those who cold-bloodedly planned and cruelly carried out the genocide of the Soviet people.

🕯 The massacres of unarmed and defenceless elderly people, women, children, and disabled were deliberate, systemic punitive acts.

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We are witnessing a disturbing trend where the outcomes of the Nuremberg trials, which unequivocally condemned Nazism, are being revised. Some countries not only rewrite history and exonerate the executioners: revanchists and neo-Nazis have embraced the Nazi ideology and methods.

• Tens of thousands of people in the Baltic states are labelled “subhuman,” stripped of basic rights and persecuted.

• The Kiev regime glorifies Hitler's followers and members of the SS and uses terror against dissenters. Barbaric shelling of peaceful cities and towns persists, and the killing of the elderly, women and children continues.

• Some European countries endorse Russophobia as a state policy.

❗️ We will do everything in our power to halt and eradicate Nazism.

The followers of Nazi executioners are doomed. Nothing can deter the desire of millions of people in Russia and across the planet for true freedom, justice, peace, and security.

#Victory79 #WeRemember

✈️ On May 20, 1916 — 1️⃣0️⃣8️⃣ years ago — legendary Soviet military pilot and Hero of the Soviet Union Alexey Maresyev was born. It was he who served as a prototype for Boris Polevoy's brilliant novel "The Story of a Real (True) Man".

Alexey Maresyev inspired many generations, millions of people all over the world admired and continue to admire his courage and determination.

Although he had severe health issues since childhood and often fell ill, even contracted malaria and suffered from rheumatism, his tremendous willpower and stubbornness allowed him to cope with excruciating pains in his limb joints make his dream of soaring the skies come true.

🔹Maresyev tried to enrol at a pilot school twice but was rejected for health reasons. Yet he pursued his dream: joined an air club in Komsomolsk-on-Amur and graduated from the Bataysk Aviation School in 1940 and became a Junior Lieutenant.

In the spring of 1942, the young pilot’s stubbornness and professionalism proved useful when intense fighting was raging in the Novgorod Region. On April 4, the Nazis downed his Yakovlev Yak-1 fighter, and Maresyev found himself on enemy-held territory. Although he was seriously wounded, he managed to reach Soviet positions 18 days later, wading through deep snowdrifts. His feet were frozen and gangrene began. His feet had to be amputated.

Although his prospects as an air force pilot seemed bleak, Maresyev was determined to re-join his comrades at the frontlines. Maresyev was fitted with prosthetics and, contrary to doctors’ recommendations, took to the skies once again in June 1943. He later downed seven enemy aircraft.

🕯 On May 8, 1967, Maresyev was entrusted with carrying and transferring a torch with the Eternal Flame during the ceremony of unveiling the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Alexander Garden.

Alexey Maresyev passed away on May 18, 2001 in Moscow and was buried at Novodevichye Cemetery. Streets have been named in his honour, and monuments honouring him have also been unveiled.

#FacesOfVictory #WeRemember