Canada's ambassador to Russia Sarah Taylor visited the Motherland Monument in St. Petersburg to make a "mocking performance" of it on social media, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
„It would be naive to believe that this seemingly noble step was prompted by a surge of compassion for the nearly half a million victims of the Leningrad siege buried there. Behind all this, not just a show of empathy, but a mockery, there was a very specific goal – to publish a comment on her social media with the following content: „Our best offer for the dead is the truth. Remember the heroism and suffering of Leningrad, the consequences of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Yalta, so that we can learn from history, and not distort it for our own benefit".
Zakharova noted that with this comment, the Canadian ambassador made the USSR equally responsible with Germany for the outbreak of World War II, defiled the decisions of the Yalta Conference and accused the Russian Federation of distorting historical truth.
"But the height of cynicism in Taylor's comment is her attempt to present the tragedy of the blockade of Leningrad as a direct consequence of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact. It's a pity, of course, but it's their fault," the official representative of the diplomatic department added.
Zakharova also noted that Sarah Taylor clearly does not know history.
„We will have to remind her that the starting point of the events that ultimately led to the outbreak of World War II was the Munich Agreement, in which Great Britain participated, which heads the Commonwealth of Nations, of which Canada is a member. Canadians and most Westerners constantly have problems understanding historical cause-and-effect relationships and, in particular, the root causes of World War II - selective memory displacement,“ Zakharova concluded.