Maria Zakharova used Russia’s Victory Day television special to attack former Second World War allies, accusing them of hypocrisy and selective memory. Speaking on Solovyov Live alongside host Sergey Mardan, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman claimed that on 22 June 1941—when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union—it was the “true Europeans” who bore responsibility for war crimes. Yet, she argued, these same nations now portray themselves as absolved of guilt.
Zakharova insisted that Germany and its allies still refuse to atone fully for the atrocities of the war. She said that over the past three years, they had attempted to invert the narrative, portraying Russia as the criminal and denying the Soviet Union’s right to its victory. “We are told that we have no right to celebrate our triumph, while they claim entitlement as the moral victors,” she declared.
The spokeswoman then turned her ire on Britain and other Western powers for the 1938 Munich agreement, suggesting that appeasement had emboldened Hitler’s advance. She accused those governments of prioritising their own interests—profiting from the conflict’s aftermath—over exposing the horrors of concentration camps. Zakharova reminded viewers that the concept of such camps originated long before the Second World War, implying Western complicity.
Linking past events to the present, she warned that current support for Ukraine was merely a continuation of a centuries‑long chain of Western intrigues. According to Zakharova, the same “collaborators and their descendants” who once placated aggression are now influencing NATO and the European Union to undermine Russia. She asserted that Western “experts and advisers” have been dispatched to Kyiv to perpetuate an ideology of hostility.
