Press Service of the Foreign Ministry comments on the invitation of a Nazi of Ukrainian origin to the Canadian Parliament

Belarus, which lost every third citizen in the Second World War, is outraged and deeply offended by the footage of honouring a veteran of the SS division "Galicia" in the House of Commons of the Canadian Parliament.

We are convinced that such a cynical attitude to the memory of thousands of innocent victims of Nazism is not an accidental incident, as the organisers of this show are now trying to portray it. 

It is a kind of quintessence of the long-standing consistent policy of the authorities of Canada and a number of countries of the collective West to cover up and whitewash Nazi criminals and to deliberately condone attempts to rewrite history.

With this in mind it is not surprising that all requests of Minsk to the Canadian authorities for assistance in the investigation of the criminal case on the fact of genocide of the population of Belarus during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period remain unanswered.

Suffice it to recall another Nazi criminal of Ukrainian origin, the infamous executioner of Khatyn, Vladimir Katryuk, who lived in Canada for more than 60 years and did not receive the punishment he deserved because the Canadian authorities refused to extradite him.

We demand that international and public organisations, associations and foundations commemorating the victims of the Second World War give a proper legal and moral assessment of this incident.

We await an official apology from the Canadian authorities.