TOKYO (Sputnik) — Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a monstrous crime against humanity, while the main US goal was probably to demonstrate its military power, and those cities were cynically used as a proving ground, speaker of the Russian Federation Council Valentina Matvienko said on Tuesday.
"It was a monstrous crime, in more current phrasing a crime against humanity. In August 1945, when World War II almost ended, there was no need, for sure, to launch nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Matvienko told journalists.
She stressed that people should keep this awful crime in memory so that nothing like this ever happened in the future.
"You know, I think that the main goal of the United States was probably to demonstrate its military power, and cynically use these cities as a proving ground for testing nuclear weapons, perfectly knowing that peaceful towns would be destroyed and hundreds, tens of thousands of people would die. And even this did not stop them," Matvienko said.
In 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on August 6 and 9 respectively. The bombing in Hiroshima killed about 150,000 people, and the strike on Nagasaki claimed the lives of some 70,000 people.
