MOSCOW. May 10 (Interfax) - The people of Russia and the United States should follow the example of the Second World War generation and unite in the fight for the idea of peace and freedom, U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Tefft said.
"Despite the differences of ideology that divided their governments, our forebears - everyday Americans and Russians, millions of whom made the ultimate sacrifice and millions more whose lives were changed irrevocably by the experience of the war-came together to do what was right. Surely we can do the same today, if we choose to remain true to their example," Tefft said on his LiveJournal blog.
The Russians and the Americans of the Second World War generation "fought for the idea of a world that was free and at peace - a world whose future would be decided not at gunpoint, but at the ballot box; not by dictators and their armies of conquest, but by the people themselves, empowered to determine their own destiny," he said.
"All of us who have benefited from the peace and prosperity that followed in a world where relations between countries are based on law, rather than the principle that might makes right, are forever in their debt," the ambassador said.
"That dream is still one that's worth fighting for - and it's one that we can work together to achieve if we choose to do so, just as our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents did so long ago," Tefft said.
"Of the images that will always stay with me from my time in Russia, one of the most moving is surely the yearly sight of the 'Immortal Regiment' on Victory Day," the diplomat said.
"Seeing Russians march each year by the tens of thousands, watched over by so many departed heroes, is a stark reminder of World War Two's human cost-a cost borne most heavily by the peoples of the Soviet Union," he said.