🎙 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at a wreath-laying ceremony at the memorial plaques in the Foreign Ministry building (Moscow, May 6, 2025)

💬 These days, we are marking a great date, the 80th anniversary of the glorious Victory won by the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War.

Today, we, the Foreign Ministry staff, with the participation of our veterans and young employees, must make the oath to be eternally loyal to the gains, feats of valour, and heroism, which have guaranteed life to our state, to our common Motherland, the Soviet Union, and the future of rising generations.

In those years, many employees of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and their colleagues from the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade left for the front and defended our capital and our Motherland along with Red Army troops and civilian volunteers. They made their contribution to the Great Victory. At the same time, the diplomats, who were filling in for them at the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, as well as their secret service and intelligence colleagues, ensured diplomatic and foreign policy support for the Soviet people’s heroic struggle to save Europe from Nazism. <...>

Throughout the war, the diplomats were doing what was necessary to preclude treason. Today, these documents have been declassified and published. They found out in due time that the British were in the lead of preparations for Operation Unthinkable. It was unthinkable indeed, implying as it did an attack on the Soviet Union with the aim (how familiar it sounds today) of inflicting a “strategic defeat” on it. That experience is invaluable for us now. <...>

Today, they have again rallied against us under the banners of Nazism (in the literal sense of the word) by supporting the openly racist, anti-Russian Zelensky regime that stages torch processions and throws troops with chevrons of Nazi divisions on their sleeves into the war’s meat-grinder. Like before Operation Unthinkable, they are threatening to inflict a “strategic defeat” on us on the battlefield.

🏅 It is important not only to cherish the memory of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War and #WWII, who have ensured our future and current development (development, I am sure, for long decades and centuries to come), but also to remember the diplomatic experience and lessons of those events. <...>

These days, 80 Eternal Flames are being lighted in our country for the first time. A tradition has been born to take a particle of the Eternal Flame in the Alexander Gardens in Moscow and bring it to someone’s small motherland. Not so long ago, residents of Lugansk did this, followed by a number of other cities. Symbolically, this happens soon after the Happy Easter, when particles of the Holy Fire from Jerusalem travel all over the world, with people celebrating Easter Sunday. For us, this Victory also means a resurrection of the whole of our people, of our history, traditions and pride. We are in duty bound to convey these feelings to our children and grandchildren as our mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers have conveyed them to us.

I want to congratulate the Foreign Ministry staff, the staff or our missions in the regions of the Russian Federation, at embassies and consulates on the upcoming holiday of Great Victory. My special greetings go to our veterans, who are, as usual, on station. They symbolise the generation bridge that has made it possible for us to survive and emerge strengthened from most different situations, including those linked to wars and diplomatic battles.

☝️ Everything is still ahead. No one has promised that all problems can be solved at one go. Life is requiring constant efforts.

I hope that our team that has repeatedly proven its mettle in most difficult situations will continue to implement with honour the foreign policy charted by President of Russia Vladimir Putin.

It is aimed at ensuring in an unconditional manner the Russian Federation’s legitimate, vital interests on the international scene.

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