PARIS, August 31. /TASS/. Certain states’ military buildup and attempts to divide nations into "first-rate" and "second-rate" ones are reminiscent of developments that took place during the decade that preceded the Second World War, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe Ivan Soltanovsky has told TASS.

"This year [on September 1] we mark the 80th anniversary since the outbreak of World War II. Not only is this date important from the point of view of history, it is also of great political significance," Soltanovsky said. "The anniversary is an important occasion to think about the chain of destructive events, caused by the dogmatism, stubbornness and short-sighted approach of European political elites in 1930s, which led humanity to the six-year-long massacre. This is also a chance to compare those events to present-day political processes and to discover several unpleasant parallels."

"Regretfully, many unpleasant similarities with the events of the 1930s can be found in the modern world. Countries are still divided into ‘first-rate’ and ‘second-rate’ ones, countries from the first group still have more rights than others and are still ready to sustain their economic well-being at the expense of the second group," Soltanovsky said, mentioning the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the role of certain countries in the present-day Syrian crisis.

"Western nations are still seeking to ensure their security at the expense of others. All of Russia’s latest initiatives in creating a common system of security in Europe have been ignored," the Russian diplomat went on.

He also said the majority of EU member states turn a blind eye to discrimination of certain minorities and glorification of Nazis and their collaborationists in Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine. Those states’ attempts to "wipe out the names of soldiers and marshals who liberated them" have also been left largely unnoticed, Soltanovsky said.

"At all international platforms and in the course of bilateral contacts, Russian diplomats have been trying to explain how dead-ended and dangerous those policies might be," Russia’s envoy to the Council of Europe said. "We hope that our efforts would not prove to be futile and the world would not plunge into new madness."

"Facts about WWII and the role of the Red Army in the victory over the Nazi Germany must never be extorted," he added. "This is not the case where ‘varying points of view’ are permissible, as some states want it to be. Free interpretation of historic events may have irreparable consequences.".