"On June 22, there was the start of the most ambitious and terrible war of annihilation in the history of humanity, directed against the peoples of the Soviet Union. This is the day of their memory. This is a day of the world history," Platzeck wrote.
Platzeck recalled that the brutal campaign claimed lives of 27 million people, two thirds of whom were civilians. The Leningrad blockade alone claimed over one million lives. Thousands of villages were destroyed in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, the politician stressed.
"Of course, there was no evil intent to do so. Most likely, the thing wasn't just properly thought out," Platzeck said.
Nevertheless, he stressed that Germany could use the date as an opportunity to restore friendly relations with Russia and resolve tensions that arose between countries amid the conflict in Ukraine.
"We have a wrong attitude to our national responsibility and miss a historic opportunity in the context of relations with our biggest neighbor in Eastern Europe," Platzeck said.
Relations between Russia and Germany deteriorated in 2014 over the Ukrainian crisis, when the European Union along with the United States and some other countries imposed several rounds of sanctions against Russia, accusing it of meddling in Ukraine's internal affairs, a claim Moscow has repeatedly denied.
"Russia again and again showed us what real forgiveness is. Germans are being welcomed as friends in the places where the greatest tragedies of the Second World War took place, on the battlefields near St. Petersburg, Volgograd and Kursk," the politician stated, adding that Germany should make more efforts to restore friendly relations with its Eastern neighbor.
