Western diplomats laid flowers at Moscow’s Solovetsky Stone memorial for victims of Soviet-era political repression amid Kremlin’s Stalin rehabilitation.
MOSCOW: Western diplomats in Moscow honoured victims of Soviet-era political repression on Wednesday.
The ceremony occurred as Russian authorities continue rehabilitating Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and using history to justify its offensive on Ukraine.
Since sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has effectively outlawed all forms of dissent.
This includes banning groups that criticised Stalin’s glorification and sought to preserve memory of those persecuted in his 1930s Great Terror.
The Kremlin casts Stalin as a war hero who defeated Nazi Germany in World War II.
This glosses over massive repression that saw millions put in labour camps, mass deaths and a forced famine in Ukraine.
AFP reporters saw envoys from Britain, France, Germany and EU representatives laying flowers at the Solovetsky Stone memorial.
The memorial stands outside the FSB headquarters, successor to the feared Soviet-era KGB.
A few members of the public also laid flowers at the site.
Some wreaths had yellow and blue ribbons around them, the colours of the Ukrainian flag now taboo in Russia.
Others featured blue-and-white colours typically associated with Russian opposition movements.
Before the Ukraine war, the now-outlawed Memorial organisation gathered activists for an annual “Returning of the Names” ceremony.
Russians would read names of people exiled, imprisoned or executed under Stalin at this location.
Russia ordered Memorial to dissolve in 2021 after accusations of creating a “false image of the USSR as a terrorist state”.
Last year officials shuttered Moscow’s award-winning Gulag History Museum that told the story of Soviet-era repression.
Busts of Stalin have been erected in many Russian cities, including in a major Moscow metro station. – AFP
