Russia calls OSCE comments on WWII bill inappropriate

Russia believes it is inappropriate for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to voice different opinions when it comes to the results of World War II, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. "In the circumstances when the attempts to revise the results of the World War II and Nuremberg Trials have not been stopped, heroization of Nazism and denigrating of the liberator countries cannot be justified by freedom of opinion and expression," the ministry said in a statement. The OSCE, a European multilateral institution, said last week that it was concerned over a bill under consideration in the Russian State Duma, the lower house of the parliament, that was aimed to outlaw falsifications of the history of the Great Patriotic War. The bill envisages fines of up to 15,000 U.S. dollars and a prison term of up to five years for "dissemination of deliberately false information" about the Red Army and for attempts to whitewash Nazism. Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE representative on freedom of the media, said the bill was "potentially dangerous" for media freedom in Russia.