MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd July, 2021) Russia expects the Belgian government to make the right decision and demolish a monument to the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS, erected in 2018, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
The monument to Latvian Legionnaires was unveiled in September 2018 in the Belgian city of Zedelgem, where a former British prisoner of war camp for Latvian SS soldiers was situated after World War II.
"We hope that local Belgian authorities will make the right and historically fair decision with respect to the many millions of WWII victims," the senior Russian diplomat stated.
Moscow condemns any glorification of Nazi criminals and their accomplices, and therefore calls for the immediate demolition of the monument are fair, Zakharova said at a briefing.
During WWII the units of the Latvian Legion committed a range of crimes in Poland and the Soviet Union, including the killing of civilians in the Russian villages of Zhestyanaya Gorka and Chernoye.
Members of the Lithuanian Waffen-SS battalions, alongside Nazi Party officials and high-ranking military officers, were recognized as criminal by the decision of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.
