We strongly believe that OMEP must remain a depoliticized organization, focused on early childhood education. However, we have received the letter with the call to share the position of World OMEP on the situation in Ukraine.
OMEP Russia announces its official position on this issue:
Unfortunately, the war in Ukraine has been going on for 8 long years. Even more worryingly, the situation in Donbass, which has been shelled by the Kiev authorities for years, resulting in deaths of countless people, including children, has never attracted any attention so far. In order to end this war, so that children would not live in basements and will be able speak their native Russian, so that Nazi symbols and slogans would not be the new norm, Russia, having used all possible diplomatic means, was forced to launch a military operation.
Now our teachers are working closely with the children of Donbass, and it is unbearable to learn all the shocking details of their lives. Children under the age of 8 do not know a lot of what their peers from our country know and are able to do, but they have learned to define the type of weapon by the sound during shelling.
We understand that now it is very difficult for you to draw objective conclusions with the current overflow of information that is directly opposite of truth, and sometimes is deliberately fake. Unfortunately, our committee will not be able to take part in the 74th Conference in Athens and present the documents and materials on this issue to our colleagues, but our committee is confident that after the operation is completed, the whole world will definitely learn the truth.
The Russian Federation is a multinational country, and OMEP Russia is firmly convinced that the future development and well-being of young children are indeed under imminent threat when Neo-Nazis are being armed with the most modern weapons, when biological military laboratories are created, when those who profess Neo-Nazism are already talking about the possibility of using nuclear weapons, when the ideas of Nazism and Russophobia once again consume countries. We know for a fact what it is. 28 million of our ancestors sacrificed their lives for a world without Nazism.
OMEP Russia would like to appeal to you personally and to the whole world with a call to remain objective and impartial in the time of any global crises, which are, to our great regret, very prevalent in the recent years, and to strive to maintain dialogue, humanity, rationality and justice for all our children, without dividing them on the basis of nationality, and for their families and peoples involved in this and any other conflict around the world.