Коллектив Посольства России в США сердечно поздравляет всех сотрудников ТАСС со знаменательной датой – 120-летием со дня создания первого в нашей стране информационного агентства.

За долгие годы активной и самоотверженной деятельности Агентство превратилось в один из ведущих источников объективной и качественной информации. Сегодня ТАСС располагает одной из крупнейших в мире корреспондентских сетей, выпуская новости на нескольких языках. Оперативное и достоверное освещение ТАСС событий в России и на международной арене пользуется заслуженным авторитетом как у нас в стране, так и за рубежом.

Посольство высоко ценит сложившиеся партнерские отношения с ТАСС, опирается на сотрудничество с Агентством в информационном сопровождении российской внешней политики и работе, направленной на укрепление позиций России.

Искренне желаем руководству и всем сотрудникам ТАСС здоровья, благополучия, новых творческих успехов и всего самого доброго. Благодарим за преданность делу. Пусть ТАСС и далее остается флагманом отечественной и мировой журналистики, задавая высочайшие стандарты профессионализма!

#ТАСС120

The staff of the Russian Embassy in the USA cordially congratulates all TASS employees on the significant date - the 120th anniversary of the establishment of our country's first news agency.

Over many years of active and dedicated work, the Agency has become one of the leading sources of objective and high-quality information. Today, TASS has one of the largest correspondent networks in the world, producing news in several languages. TASS's prompt and reliable coverage of events in Russia and on the international arena enjoys well-deserved authority both in our country and abroad.

The Embassy highly values the established partnership with TASS and relies on cooperation with the Agency in providing information support for Russian foreign policy and work aimed at strengthening Russia's positions.

We sincerely wish the management and all TASS employees good health, well-being, new creative successes, and all the best. We thank you for your dedication to the cause. May TASS continue to remain the flagship of domestic and world journalism, setting the highest standards of professionalism!

#TASS120

🗓 September 1st marks 85 years ago since the start of World War II – the bloodiest conflict in the history of mankind. It claimed many dozens of millions of peoples' lives (by some estimates, 80+ mln perished), including over 27 million citizens of the Soviet Union.

▪️ 61 states, with over 80 percent of the world’s population, were drawn into the bloody ordeal unleashed by the Axis powers; hostilities spread to 40 countries.

📖 Read our in-depth retrospective overview in full

The background of the greatest tragedy of the 20th century still remains in the focus of historians’ attention. The entire range of contradictions that provoked the war stemmed from World War I and can be traced back to the Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919.

👉 It was the Versailles system of international relations, drafted by the UK and France, that made the basis for the rise of revanchist sentiments in Europe. The League of Nations, the organization established to settle international disputes within the legal framework, technically became a tool for the Western powers to achieve their political goals.

Not surprising that in Europe, torn by contradictions, fascism rapidly gained popularity. Politicians and extreme right-wing ideologues who were convinced of the superiority of their nation and ethnicities came to power first in Italy (1922) and then in Germany (1933), humiliated by the Versailles Treaty. The political establishment of the Western countries preferred to remain unaware and close their eyes on the danger these new ideologies presented. Their cynical view considered that Nazi aggression could be, in a typical Anglo-Saxon style, redirected towards the east where the young Soviet state was rapidly developing.

The infamous Munich Betrayal of 1938 was the apotheosis of the self-serving “appeasement” policy that the Western countries had preferred to building a collective security system suggested by the Soviet Union. With the tacit consent by the UK and France, Hitler ruthlessly annexed the sovereign state of Czechoslovakia. It was only Moscow that was willing to provide military assistance to the Czechoslovakians, but was unable to do so due to Poland that was playing along with Hitler and taking advantage of Czechoslovakia’s annexation by occupying the Cieszyn region.

🔻 A year later, a similar drama played out in the Far East: the Anglo-Japanese treaty was signed in June 1939, untying Tokyo’s hands in China. The Soviet Union could have become the next victim of militarist Japan. According to recently declassified documents, the Japanese command had been planning a possible attack against the Soviet Union since 1938, with nearly a million-strong Kwantung Army troops deployed along the border and ready to invade of our country at any moment, with its soldiers and officers known to show no aversion to human experiments to develop biological weapons. The Soviet Union had to contain Japan’s potential invasion by keeping substantial forces on its eastern borders until the very end of the war.

❗️ Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 was a direct consequence of the policy of intrigues and manuevers pursued by the West, which did not allow to create an anti-Hitler coalition to jointly resist the Third Reich.

❌ In this context, the assertions of an alleged ‘equivalence’ between Nazism and Communism are unacceptable and blasphemous, as are the attempts to place equal blame for the start of the war on Germany and the Soviet Union in order to downplay the decisive contribution of the Soviet Union on the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War, which crushed Hitler’s war machine, and to diminish the heroism of our soldiers-liberators.

☝️ Defeating the most aggressive reactionary forces was the most important outcome of the Great Victory of May 9, 1945. Our country saved many peoples (considered by the Nazis and their cronies “non-Aryan”), that the Nazis planned to kill in concentration camps or to turn into slaves.

▪️ 20 years ago, on September 1, 2004, a group of terrorists seized School No. 1 in Beslan, Russia's North Ossetia, during a ceremony marking the start of the new school year. Children, parents and teachers were taken hostage. They were held without food and water for almost three days.

That bloody terrorist attack claimed 334 lives, including 186 children. The Alfa and Vympel special-purpose units of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation launched a counter-terrorist operation and managed to save 811 lives. Ten Federal Security Service special operations soldiers and two EMERCOM officers were killed in the assault.

🕯 People in Russia and abroad are mourning the innocent victims of the terrorist attack today. It has become an unhealing wound for our entire nation which bleeds to this day.

Encouraged by Western masterminds, the terrorists sought to destabilise Russian society and sow interethnic and inter-faith discord. Against all odds, our society stood firm and survived. The terrorists may have destroyed a school building, but it was substituted by two newly-built schools equipped up to the most modern standards.

⚠️ Today, Russia is once again facing a terrorist threat. The collective West is waging a hybrid war against our country, using, among other things, terrorist and extremist groups.

Russia remains firmly committed to a principled fight against the threats of terrorism and calls on the international community to join forces in combating this scourge with the UN playing its central coordinating role.

#Beslan20