Kyrgyzstan's President Almazbek Atambayev said the state borders between former Soviet republics should become "the borders of friendship and cooperation," ITAR-TASS reports. He was speaking during at a function on the occasion of the 69th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War.
"We shouldn’t divide [people] by nationality, because in difficult times we must be together as one. We have to keep the country's independence, but we should not lose our common history, culture, languages and mutual respect for brotherly republics," ITAR TASS quotes him as saying.
He added that 95,000 Kyrgyz perished in war.
Atambayev reminded that 140,000 people had been evacuated from Soviet regions occupied by the Nazis, including 16,000 children from the besieged Leningrad. "Kyrgyzstan welcomed the starving children from the besieged city as its own kind; the history of the survivors of the siege is the history of unity of our peoples; we had one common land, one country and one victory for all," the Kyrgyz president underlined.
