Moscow said on Tuesday it expected Kiev to punish the Ukrainian nationalists who disrupted Victory Day celebrations in Lvov and attacked Russian diplomats.
Members of the Ukrainian Svoboda (Freedom) nationalist organization on May 9 engaged in a brawl with WWII veterans, tore and burnt Soviet flags, and trod on a wreath that the Russian consul general in Lvov, Oleg Astakhov, planned to lay at the tombs of Soviet soldiers who died while liberating Ukraine from Nazi Germany.
Ukrainian nationalists claim that Ukraine suffered identically from both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union.
“We expect that those guilty will be found by local law enforcement agencies and receive the punishment that they deserve, and that similar situations will be excluded from the practice of bilateral relations,” Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.
“It is a crude violation of basic human rights, including those stipulated by the European Human Rights Convention,” the official said.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych warned nationalists on Monday against attempts to sow discord in society and said that the government would “respond” to such actions.
MOSCOW, May 10 (RIA Novosti)