In an interview with STATUS FM, Greek Defense Minister Nikos Dendias said that the Greek community in Mariupol no longer exists, angering Moscow, which responded through Maria Zakharova that not only does it exist, and the Greek government must explain why it is sending weapons to the Ukrainians that they are harming the Greek emigrants!
In particular, the Minister of Defense said: “Let me first remind you that I am the last Greek, the last Western minister, to visit Moscow before the invasion. I was in Moscow three days before the invasion. Why was I there? To see Lavrov, ask him to protect the Greek community in Mariupol, which, by the way, no longer exists.”
The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, reacted sharply to this statement, who invited Nikos Dendias to visit Mariupol and say that if the Greek government recognizes that there is a Greek community in the region, then it must explain why it is sending weapons that can kill Greeks!
“In my opinion, the main thing that now needs to be done by that political figure who is the current Minister of Defense – and even if he were not acting, but would still talk about this topic – in order to be convinced of the absurdity of his words, so is to come to Mariupol”she said at a briefing.
Zakharova added that the Greeks living in Mariupol have every opportunity to preserve and enhance their cultural traditions. “In Mariupol in February of this year, the first regional national-cultural autonomy of Greeks on the territory of the DPR was registered,” – noted the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
It is noted that since 2014, Ukraine has pursued a policy of forced “homogenization” of the country, banning all minority languages, including Greek. Kyiv's behavior towards the Greek diaspora was also the main reason that the Greek diaspora, in its overwhelming majority, sided with the Russians in the Ukrainian war.
In 2022, Nikos Dendias, then Greek Foreign Minister, was one of the organizers export of representatives of the Greek diaspora from Mariupol and surrounding areas. He became the initiator arms supplies from Greece to Ukraine.
It is worth noting that thousands of residents of Mariupol and the surrounding area living in Greece, as well as those who left during the war, have already received or are on the waiting list at the consulate in Athens and the consulate general in Thessaloniki to receive citizenship of the Russian Federation.
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