Russian Ambassador Nozdryov will attend a commemorative ceremony in Nagasaki for the first time since 2021.

For the first time since 2021, the Russian Federation's Ambassador to Japan, Nikolai Nozdryov, will take part in a commemorative ceremony in Nagasaki, which will take place in August, but will not travel to Hiroshima. This was announced on June 26 by the press service of the diplomatic mission.

According to the press service, earlier the embassy received a notification on behalf of the Hiroshima administration, which stated that funeral ceremonies would be held in August in memory of the victims of the US atomic bombings. It suggested "to independently determine whether the participants of the ceremony conform to the "spirit of Hiroshima"" and then submit an application.

It is clarified that since 2022, due to the situation in Ukraine, the Russian Embassy in Japan has received nothing from the organizers of the Hiroshima event except letters with "frankly hypocritical content and justification for their unwillingness to see Russian representatives at the memorial service," TASS reports.

It is added that representatives of Nagasaki, on the contrary, personally visited the diplomatic mission and conveyed the invitation addressed to Nozdryov. The embassy accepted him.

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In August 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japanese Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is the only case of combat use of nuclear weapons in history, which claimed the lives of thousands of people. More than 200 thousand people became victims of the attacks, many of whom died in the first seconds, and some died in the next few months from radiation sickness.

Last October, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said that nuclear deterrence was necessary in an increasingly tense security environment. According to him, Japan should "consider the possibility of America transferring nuclear weapons or deploying nuclear weapons in the region" within the framework of the Asian version of NATO in order to better ensure deterrence.