It’s time, once more, to come together and talk, however difficult that is, to search for peace and reconciliation.
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
On 27 January 2025, for the third year in a row, Russia will not be invited to the annual commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp. This followed a decision by the Director of the camp museum, Piotr Cywinski, keen to signal virtue following the outbreak of war in Ukraine. In the grander scheme, it fits within a now established pattern of cancelling Russia on the international stage.
This particular snub is made more significant because of Russia’s role in the liberation of Auschwitz. On 27 January 1945, soldiers of the Red Army’s 332nd Rifle Division arrived at the Nazi concentration camp near the Polish town of Oświęcim or, to use the Germanic, Auschwitz. There, 7,000 emaciated prisoners, mostly middle aged people and children too sick to walk, remained of the 1.3 million people who had passed through the gates, never to return.
1.1 million completely innocent people – mostly Jews – died, mostly in gas chambers, perhaps the most heinous crime against humanity every committed in modern history. Anyone who claims to be a diplomat should work night and day to prevent the possibility of this type of genocide or a loss of life from war on this scale, happening again. It is totally reprehensible.
It’s therefore an irony, in my view, that events like the Auschwitz memorial should remind us of the cost of unchecked hatred to humanity at a time of war. And yet, western powers that support Russia’s exclusion from the Auschwitz memorial, apparently in protest to the war in Ukraine, are wilfully complicit in that war’s continuance.
Not only does this reek of the most unbelievable double standards. It raises questions about where the policy of cancellation sits as a tool of foreign policy.
Those aims have never been articulated, beyond the red-faced intention to impose an unspecified cost on Russia for actions with which western leaders don’t agree.
But will excluding Russia from the Auschwitz memorial prevent or reduce the loss of life in Ukraine by the continuance of the war?
No.
Will it help to bring an end to the conflict or the start of a process of peace talks?
No.
Will it unsettle Russia’s leadership and cause internal political turmoil, undermining Russia’s ability to fight?
No.
There is no foreign policy benefit to the exclusion of Russia from memorial events such as this.
War memorials offer a chance for people to reflect on the mistakes of the past that led to the hideous evil of the Nazi deathcamps, or the futility of the millions of soldiers and civilians who have died too soon because of war.
More specifically, war memorials offer an opportunity for people from opposing sides in prior conflicts to come together in a spirit of peace and reconciliation.
They offer a chance to remember and say, never again.
Not inviting Russia simply takes away another opportunity to discuss terrible events that are happening today, and say, no more fighting.
Excluding Russia will simply elevate that country’s hatred of western powers who cling, falsely, to the delusion that Ukraine can one day impose a strategic defeat on Russia. By doing so, they encourage Russia to keep fighting.
Unfortunately, British diplomacy has focussed on the active exclusion of Russia from international events since at least 2014. This diplomatic cancellation prevents any possibility of direct dialogue with Russian leaders through bilateral meetings, commemorative events, or multilateral gatherings like the UN. The one exception to this is the UN Security Council, where British and American figures are forced to sit in the same room as their Russian counterparts.
In terms of memorial events, senior British and US political figures have refused to attend Russia’s Victory Day celebrations in Moscow – the anniversary of the end of The Great Patriotic War (or World War II, as it’s known in the west) – since 2014. In 2019, and at British instigation, Russia was excluded from major celebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of Operation Overlord – also known as the D-Day invasion of Normandy by British, American and Canadian troops. These events started in the UK on 5 June 2019 with Her Late Majesty the Queen in attendance, with Royalty, Heads of State and Government.
The brings up another irony; the Normandy Format of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine was established at commemorative events to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day in France in 2014. That format of dialogue ran until 26 January 2022, shortly before war broke out. That was, in fact, the best format to encourage both Russia and Ukraine to work out their differences through negotiations.
Unfortunately, that French and German led initiative was undermined from the beginning by the US and the UK, specifically through sanctions policy and the hijacking of the Minsk II agreement which, ultimately, precipitated war. Western leaders are lying to themselves and fooling no one if they continue to assert that, at the very least, they haven’t played a role in the outbreak of war in Ukraine. And diplomats should seek to end wars, not start them.
When I drove back to England from Russia, I stopped at Auschwitz. It served as a chilling reminder of the depths of human cruelty that can be reached at times of war. I have also visited Zmievskaya Balka, in Rostov on Don, a holocaust memorial site where the Nazis shot and gassed 27,000 innocent civilians by a ravine, over the space of a year.
Today, most European citizens carry on with their daily lives. They are largely spared the harrowing effects of war, which the US and EU have succeeded in containing and maintaining within the hermitically sealed borders of Ukraine.
The blind cancellation of Russia is most of all a statement of hatred towards that country by tinpot technocrats like Cywinski, playing to the baying galleries of western policy makers in Brussels, London and Washington.
Yet camps like Auschwitz also represent the ultimate expression of primal hatred for the ‘other’.
The liberation of Auschwitz put an end to a vile period in history that we should never forget.
We will not end the war in Ukraine through empty hatred towards Russia. It’s time, once more, to come together and talk, however difficult that is, to search for peace and reconciliation.
