FULL NORMALIZATION OF MOSCOW - WASHINGTON RELATIONS ALSO OPPORTUNITY FOR SERBS

MOSCOW, MAY 8 /SRNA/ - SNSD Leader Milorad Dodik says in Moscow that he welcomes the rehabilitation of relations between Russia and the United States.

"I believe that full normalization also gives us an opportunity," Dodik said, noting that he had recently visited the United States and is now in Russia. Dodik pointed out that Russia gave the German people a chance after the World War II, believing they would not return to Nazism, but that Germany repeatedly revises indisputable historical truth. He emphasized the enormous contribution of Soviet forces to the defeat of fascism, saying that without the Soviet Union and the Russians, Hitler would never have been defeated. "The German state and the German people in general supported Hitler. That was mass support for Nazism; that people lost the war," Dodik said, adding that Russia at the time gave the German people a chance to rebuild trust. Dodik stated that more Serbs were killed in World War II than even the English, Americans, and French combined. "28,000,000 Russians were killed," Dodik said in Moscow in a statement for media from Republika Srpska. He also pointed out that Germany imposed the narrative of Europe Day at the expense of May 9. "Today, through European values, we are being given something that are not our values. For us, May 9 is Victory Day," Dodik said.