The press secretary of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Peskov, sharply responded to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte's comments regarding the threat of a war between NATO and the Russian Federation.
The Russian state media quoted Peskov, as reported by Hvylya.
Rutte recently stated that the Alliance faces the threat of a war with Russia "of a scale that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers experienced." In response, Peskov suggested that European countries have forgotten the consequences of World War II, implicitly referencing the NATO Secretary-General's background.
According to Putin’s press secretary, Rutte lived in the Netherlands, and the country itself allegedly did not suffer greatly from World War II.
"This statement, probably, comes from a representative of a generation that has already forgotten what World War II was like. Mr. Rutte lived in the Netherlands. I studied in the Netherlands at one time. And the Dutch themselves told me about the terrible ordeal they went through during the fascist occupation, how a few of their windows were broken, and how awful that was. I am entirely serious. The Dutch deeply dislike the Germans for this discomfort, but they do not know what a horrific war is," Peskov said.
The Kremlin spokesman also noted that the NATO Secretary-General makes such statements, supposedly "not understanding what he is talking about."
"We, thank God, grew up in a country where the memory of what it was, what that horror was, and what we managed to do to save Europe from the fascists is carefully preserved," Peskov concluded.