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#NoStatuteOfLimitations
🗓 On December 18, 1943, the #KharkovTrial concluded — the first public trial of Nazi war criminals in the Soviet Union.
Held long before the Nuremberg Trials, its purpose was to show the world the horrible consequences of the Nazi occupation of Soviet territories during #WW2.
***
Years before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, on November 2, 1942, the Soviet Government established the Extraordinary State Commission for the establishment and investigation of the crimes of the Nazi invaders and their accomplices and the damage they caused to our country. The Commission's long-term mission was to document the atrocities by fascists and their collaborators on the territory of our Motherland.
In less than a year, thanks to the laborious efforts of Soviet investigative and national security agencies, extensive evidence was compiled. It formed the basis for open trials of Nazis under Soviet jurisdiction.
The first was the Kharkov Trial — a military tribunal of the 4th Ukrainian Front, held from December 15 to 19, 1943, following the city’s liberation by the Red Army in August.
Four Nazi criminals stood accused, including an SS officer and a Gestapo driver who was a collaborator, former Red Army soldier who had betrayed his Motherland. Their guilt was proven by numerous witness accounts and forensic examination. They had participated in the brutal murder of Soviet civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, in the city of #Kharkov and the Kharkov Region.
Those butchers used Gaswagen — gas vans — to suffocate victims, including children, with carbon monoxide. In Kharkov alone, the Nazis killed more than 26'000 Soviet citizens by gassing, shooting, and burning. These exterminations were carried out by special Gestapo Sonderkommandos on orders from the German command.
All defendants were sentenced to death by hanging. On December 19, 1943, the sentence of the 4th Ukrainian Front Military Tribunal was carried out in a public square in Kharkov.
❗️ The Kharkov Trial marked the beginning of a series of proceedings against Nazi criminals. These trials revealed the true face of Nazism to the world and meticulously documented its crimes, laying bare this ideology’s profoundly anti-human character.
🗓 On December 18, 1943, the #KharkovTrial concluded — the first public trial of Nazi war criminals in the Soviet Union.
Held long before the Nuremberg Trials, its purpose was to show the world the horrible consequences of the Nazi occupation of Soviet territories during #WW2.
***
Years before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, on November 2, 1942, the Soviet Government established the Extraordinary State Commission for the establishment and investigation of the crimes of the Nazi invaders and their accomplices and the damage they caused to our country. The Commission's long-term mission was to document the atrocities by fascists and their collaborators on the territory of our Motherland.
In less than a year, thanks to the laborious efforts of Soviet investigative and national security agencies, extensive evidence was compiled. It formed the basis for open trials of Nazis under Soviet jurisdiction.
The first was the Kharkov Trial — a military tribunal of the 4th Ukrainian Front, held from December 15 to 19, 1943, following the city’s liberation by the Red Army in August.
Four Nazi criminals stood accused, including an SS officer and a Gestapo driver who was a collaborator, former Red Army soldier who had betrayed his Motherland. Their guilt was proven by numerous witness accounts and forensic examination. They had participated in the brutal murder of Soviet civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, in the city of #Kharkov and the Kharkov Region.
Those butchers used Gaswagen — gas vans — to suffocate victims, including children, with carbon monoxide. In Kharkov alone, the Nazis killed more than 26'000 Soviet citizens by gassing, shooting, and burning. These exterminations were carried out by special Gestapo Sonderkommandos on orders from the German command.
All defendants were sentenced to death by hanging. On December 19, 1943, the sentence of the 4th Ukrainian Front Military Tribunal was carried out in a public square in Kharkov.
❗️ The Kharkov Trial marked the beginning of a series of proceedings against Nazi criminals. These trials revealed the true face of Nazism to the world and meticulously documented its crimes, laying bare this ideology’s profoundly anti-human character.
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#KievRegimeCrimes
⚡️ Ambassador at Large of the Russian Foreign Ministry Rodion Miroshnik:
PHOTO EVIDENCE of crimes committed by Ukrainian armed forces over the week of December 22-28:
▪️ December 22 – A kamikaze drone attacked a civilian passenger car on the Shebekino–Ziborovka road in the Belgorod Region. One civilian was injured.
▪️ December 22 – A UAV strike targeted a civilian passenger car in the city of Grayvoron, Belgorod Region.
▪️ December 23 – A fixed-wing UAV Chaklun-V struck an apartment building in Donetsk, DPR.
▪️ December 23 – An FPV drone attacked a civilian passenger car in the Bondarenkov hamlet, Belgorod Region.
▪️ December 23 – A UAV attack targeted a petrol station in Gorlovka, DPR.
▪️ December 24 – A munition was dropped from a UAV onto a civilian vehicle in Novaya Kakhovka, Kherson Region. One civilian was injured.
▪️ December 25 – Artillery shelling of the Vinogradovo electrical substation in the Kherson Region left 60,000 residents without power.
▪️ December 25 – A UAV attack targeted a private residential house in the Shakhovka hamlet, Belgorod Region.
▪️ December 27 – A UAV strike hit a civilian passenger car in Gorlovka, DPR. One civilian was injured.
▪️ December 28 – Artillery shelling of a market in Novaya Kakhovka, Kherson Region.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
⚡️ Ambassador at Large of the Russian Foreign Ministry Rodion Miroshnik:
PHOTO EVIDENCE of crimes committed by Ukrainian armed forces over the week of December 22-28:
▪️ December 22 – A kamikaze drone attacked a civilian passenger car on the Shebekino–Ziborovka road in the Belgorod Region. One civilian was injured.
▪️ December 22 – A UAV strike targeted a civilian passenger car in the city of Grayvoron, Belgorod Region.
▪️ December 23 – A fixed-wing UAV Chaklun-V struck an apartment building in Donetsk, DPR.
▪️ December 23 – An FPV drone attacked a civilian passenger car in the Bondarenkov hamlet, Belgorod Region.
▪️ December 23 – A UAV attack targeted a petrol station in Gorlovka, DPR.
▪️ December 24 – A munition was dropped from a UAV onto a civilian vehicle in Novaya Kakhovka, Kherson Region. One civilian was injured.
▪️ December 25 – Artillery shelling of the Vinogradovo electrical substation in the Kherson Region left 60,000 residents without power.
▪️ December 25 – A UAV attack targeted a private residential house in the Shakhovka hamlet, Belgorod Region.
▪️ December 27 – A UAV strike hit a civilian passenger car in Gorlovka, DPR. One civilian was injured.
▪️ December 28 – Artillery shelling of a market in Novaya Kakhovka, Kherson Region.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
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🗓 On January 23, 1930, Tanya Savicheva, a schoolgirl who kept a diary during the Siege of Leningrad, marking the days and hours of her relatives’ death, was born.
She grew up in Leningrad together with her elder sisters Yevgenia (Zhenya) and Nina and her brothers Leonid (Lyoka) and Mikhail. Their father died in 1936.
In late May 1941, Tanya finished the third grade. When the Great Patriotic War broke out the family stayed in Leningrad, working in the rear, doing everything they could to help the Red Army. On September 8, 1941, the Siege of Leningrad commenced. According to Hitler’s plans, all its residents were supposed to die.
📖 One day, Tanya found a notebook her elder sister left behind. It was in that notebook that she made her short and horribly tragic entries, which make your heart ache:
Keeping the diary helped Tanya cope with anxiety, fear, and loss. Amid hunger, constant shelling, bombings, and the death of her loved ones, the piece of paper and pencil became a form of self-comfort and support.
After her mother’s death, the severely ill Tanya lived in an orphanage, which was evacuated to the Gorky region in August 1942. She fought for her life for almost two years. In March 1944, Tanya, who was diagnosed with bone tuberculosis, scurvy, dystrophy, nervous exhaustion and blindness, was transported to a nursing home. She succumbed, worn out by her diseases.
🕯 Tanya Savicheva passed away on July 1, 1944, at the age of 14.
The only Savichevs who survived the war were her sister Nina, who was registered as missing, and her brother Mikhail, who joined the partisans. Nina, upon returning to Leningrad, found Tanya’s diary.
In 1946, the public saw Tanya’s diary at the exhibition about the heroic defence of Leningrad. In 1953, the diary was transferred to the Museum of the History of Leningrad (St Petersburg), where it has been kept since then.
Tanya Savicheva’s diary is one of many heartbreaking testimonies of the Great Patriotic War, Nazi crimes, and the inhuman trials endured by the Soviet people. Tanya became a symbol of true courage and the tragedy of besieged Leningrad.
#WeRemember #NoStatuteOfLimitations
She grew up in Leningrad together with her elder sisters Yevgenia (Zhenya) and Nina and her brothers Leonid (Lyoka) and Mikhail. Their father died in 1936.
In late May 1941, Tanya finished the third grade. When the Great Patriotic War broke out the family stayed in Leningrad, working in the rear, doing everything they could to help the Red Army. On September 8, 1941, the Siege of Leningrad commenced. According to Hitler’s plans, all its residents were supposed to die.
📖 One day, Tanya found a notebook her elder sister left behind. It was in that notebook that she made her short and horribly tragic entries, which make your heart ache:
• Zhenya died on December 28 at 12 noon, 1941.
• Grandma died on January 25 at 3 pm, 1942.
• Lyoka died on March 17 at 5 in the morning, 1942.
• Uncle Vasya died on April 13 at 2 in the morning, 1942.
• Uncle Lyosha, May 10, at 4 in the afternoon, 1942.
• Mom, May 13 at 7:30 in the morning, 1942.
• The Savichevs are dead.
• Everyone is dead.
• Only Tanya is left.
Keeping the diary helped Tanya cope with anxiety, fear, and loss. Amid hunger, constant shelling, bombings, and the death of her loved ones, the piece of paper and pencil became a form of self-comfort and support.
After her mother’s death, the severely ill Tanya lived in an orphanage, which was evacuated to the Gorky region in August 1942. She fought for her life for almost two years. In March 1944, Tanya, who was diagnosed with bone tuberculosis, scurvy, dystrophy, nervous exhaustion and blindness, was transported to a nursing home. She succumbed, worn out by her diseases.
🕯 Tanya Savicheva passed away on July 1, 1944, at the age of 14.
The only Savichevs who survived the war were her sister Nina, who was registered as missing, and her brother Mikhail, who joined the partisans. Nina, upon returning to Leningrad, found Tanya’s diary.
In 1946, the public saw Tanya’s diary at the exhibition about the heroic defence of Leningrad. In 1953, the diary was transferred to the Museum of the History of Leningrad (St Petersburg), where it has been kept since then.
Tanya Savicheva’s diary is one of many heartbreaking testimonies of the Great Patriotic War, Nazi crimes, and the inhuman trials endured by the Soviet people. Tanya became a symbol of true courage and the tragedy of besieged Leningrad.
#WeRemember #NoStatuteOfLimitations
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The Nazis began building this “factory of death” in 1938, near the Austrian city of Linz. Mauthausen was classified as a a “Category 3” camp with the harshest possible treatment. Over seven years, around 335,000 people passed through it; more than 120,000 were murdered.
In the summer of 1944, the camp opened the notorious “Block No. 20”, known among prisoners as the “barrack for the condemned”. This isolated compound held inmates sentenced to “execution by shooting”. Its prisoners were mainly soldiers and officers of the Red Army: men who had refused to betray their Fatherland, who had already attempted escapes or uprisings in other camps.
The prisoners of Block No. 20 were exterminated systematically and with deliberate cruelty. They were fed once every few days, kept in an unheated barrack, and subjected daily to exhausting “physical exercises”. For the slightest infraction, they were beaten – often to death. The block also served as a training ground for SS recruits, who practised torture and killing on the inmates.
The captured Red Army soldiers harboured no hope of liberation. By early 1945, they began preparing an escape. Of the 570 prisoners held in Block No. 20, around 70 were unable to walk. Knowing that the escape of the others would trigger their immediate execution, they asked only one thing: “Comrades, make it back to your own. Tell them our story”.
The escape was originally planned for January 29. But on that day, SS troops stormed the barrack and took away around thirty prisoners. As later became clear, not a single Soviet prisoner gave up the planned escape. All of them were burned alive by the Nazis.
⚔️ On the night of February 1-2, Mauthausen was jolted awake by cries of “Ura!” and bursts of machine-gun fire. Exhausted but unbroken in spirit, the prisoners charged the camp guards with virtually bare hands, using whatever was at hand – fire extinguishers, stones, and wooden shoe clogs. They seized one of the machine-gun towers and neutralised the others. Breaking through the barriers, more than 400 condemned prisoners scaled a 3.5-metre wall, crossed a water-filled ditch, and forced their way past barbed-wire fences, managing to escape the concentration camp.
They fled in –8 °C, through deep snow, without shoes or warm clothing. By the morning of February 2, the Nazis had launched a full-scale manhunt.
💬 From the testimony of François Boix, a Mauthausen prisoner and witness for the French prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials:
The camp commandant, Franz Ziereis, addressed civilians by radio, urging them to assist in the manhunt for escaped Russian prisoners. He said: “You are passionate hunters – and this will be more fun than hunting hares”.
The pursuit involved everyone – SS units, Wehrmacht soldiers, police, Volkssturm, Hitler Youth, and even civilians. Most of the escapees were unable to get far. A few days later, the camp authorities reported that all of the escaped prisoners had been eliminated.
But the Nazis were wrong. Of the hundreds who took part in the uprising, between 11 and 19 survived, according to various estimates.
❗️ In May 1945, Mauthausen was liberated by US Army units. Camp personnel were arrested and brought to trial in 1946. All 61 defendants were found guilty – 58 were sentenced to death, and three to life imprisonment. The death sentences were carried out on May 27-28, 1947.
The organiser of the so-called “hare hunt” and commandant of Mauthausen, Franz Ziereis, was wounded by US troops on May 23, 1945 while attempting to escape. He was taken to hospital, gave testimony, and later died under unclear circumstances. Former prisoners of Mauthausen hung the body of their tormentor on the camp fence. US forces did not intervene.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
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#NoStatuteOfLimitations
On March 16, 1968, soldiers of the United States Army carried out a massacre in the rural community of My Lai (Sơn Mỹ) in Vietnam’s Quang Ngai Province, carrying out one of the most horrific massacres of civilians during the Vietnam War.
American soldiers brutally killed more than 500 civilians, including 173 children and 182 women (17 of them pregnant).
On the morning of March 16, Charlie Company entered the village as part of a search-and-destroy mission. They had been instructed to treat anyone remaining in the area as Viet Cong fighters. Despite facing no resistance, US troops opened fire on unarmed villagers, including women and children. As they advanced, they threw grenades into huts, tortured people, and executed them on the spot. One notorious episode involved Lt William Calley, who ordered dozens of villagers to be herded into an irrigation ditch and machine-gunned.
Initially, Washington presented the events as a "major victory", claiming hundreds of enemy combatants killed. Testimonies from witnesses to these atrocities were ignored for a long time while the American military machine attempted to conceal its crimes in Vietnam.
Only in November 1969 did journalist Seymour Hersh publish his investigation, while photographs taken by Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle revealed the truth to the world. The images showed murdered civilians — peasants, women, and children with gunshot wounds to the head, mutilated bodies — while nearby American soldiers laughed and set homes on fire.
An international scandal erupted. Yet only one person was ultimately convicted — Lt William Calley. He was sentenced to life imprisonment but was pardoned after just three and a half years of house arrest. He lived to the age of 80, dying in April 2024 in the state of Florida.
❗️ My Lai massacre remains a grim reminder of how the United States wages its wars. The mass killings of civilians perpetrated by US forces abroad often goes unnoticed — or is dismissed as "collateral damage"...
On March 16, 1968, soldiers of the United States Army carried out a massacre in the rural community of My Lai (Sơn Mỹ) in Vietnam’s Quang Ngai Province, carrying out one of the most horrific massacres of civilians during the Vietnam War.
American soldiers brutally killed more than 500 civilians, including 173 children and 182 women (17 of them pregnant).
On the morning of March 16, Charlie Company entered the village as part of a search-and-destroy mission. They had been instructed to treat anyone remaining in the area as Viet Cong fighters. Despite facing no resistance, US troops opened fire on unarmed villagers, including women and children. As they advanced, they threw grenades into huts, tortured people, and executed them on the spot. One notorious episode involved Lt William Calley, who ordered dozens of villagers to be herded into an irrigation ditch and machine-gunned.
Initially, Washington presented the events as a "major victory", claiming hundreds of enemy combatants killed. Testimonies from witnesses to these atrocities were ignored for a long time while the American military machine attempted to conceal its crimes in Vietnam.
Only in November 1969 did journalist Seymour Hersh publish his investigation, while photographs taken by Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle revealed the truth to the world. The images showed murdered civilians — peasants, women, and children with gunshot wounds to the head, mutilated bodies — while nearby American soldiers laughed and set homes on fire.
An international scandal erupted. Yet only one person was ultimately convicted — Lt William Calley. He was sentenced to life imprisonment but was pardoned after just three and a half years of house arrest. He lived to the age of 80, dying in April 2024 in the state of Florida.
❗️ My Lai massacre remains a grim reminder of how the United States wages its wars. The mass killings of civilians perpetrated by US forces abroad often goes unnoticed — or is dismissed as "collateral damage"...
🤬67💔6✍5❤5🙏2💯2☃1😭1
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#NoStatuteOfLimitations
📅 75 years ago, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), notorious for its close collaboration with Nazi Germany during the Second World War, publicly called upon the United States to aid its struggle against the Soviet Union. Curiously, by this time, the West had already been assisting Ukrainian nationalists for several years under Operation Aerodynamic.
From 1948 onwards, the CIA and MI6, in collaboration with the intelligence services of West Germany and Italy (where Western “allies” retained numerous Nazi and fascist operatives), sought to plunge Ukraine into the chaos of bloody terror by forming, supplying, and expanding an anti-Soviet Ukrainian nationalist underground.
The operation’s objective was to create a zone of instability, to divert resources, and ultimately to weaken the USSR’s global influence. Much like today, Ukrainian nationalists were used as puppets and “expendable material” to advance the geopolitical aims of the West.
Even before Nazi Germany’s surrender, Western intelligence agencies began preparing for a future confrontation with the USSR, aiding SS and SD criminals and collaborators, and helping them evade justice, recruiting and exploiting them for their own ends. The militants of the OUN-UPA were no exception, being actively enlisted and deployed against the Soviet Union despite their numerous war crimes and hateful ideology.
☝️ In the end, Operation Aerodynamic failed, the UPA was decisively crushed, and the majority of the armed nationalist underground’s leaders were either eliminated or arrested.
However, some ideologues of collaboration managed to flee to the West and escape just retribution.
It was they who, over decades, propagated nationalist ideology and rewrote the history of the Second World War. In their “works,” the war crimes of Ukrainian Nazi accomplices were either denied or justified. For instance, Yaroslav Stetsko, a war criminal and associate of Bandera, established the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) in Munich in 1946 with Western intelligence support. In the 1960s, under the watchful eye of American patrons, the ABN merged into the World Anti-Communist League.
Consequently, when neo-Nazis came to power in Ukraine in our time – thanks to the Western-backed unconstitutional coup – they had no need to invent anything. They simply adopted the legacy of those OUN-UPA criminals who – with the active support of their Western handlers – were elevated to a new Ukrainian pantheon.
✍️ From the article by Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, “How the Anglo-Saxons Nurtured Ukrainian Nationalism After the Second World War” (December 24, 2025):
❗️ Today, as it was 75 years ago, the nations of the collective West, primarily European states, provide military and financial aid to Ukrainian Nazis, using them as tools to fulfil their geopolitical ambitions.
📅 75 years ago, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), notorious for its close collaboration with Nazi Germany during the Second World War, publicly called upon the United States to aid its struggle against the Soviet Union. Curiously, by this time, the West had already been assisting Ukrainian nationalists for several years under Operation Aerodynamic.
From 1948 onwards, the CIA and MI6, in collaboration with the intelligence services of West Germany and Italy (where Western “allies” retained numerous Nazi and fascist operatives), sought to plunge Ukraine into the chaos of bloody terror by forming, supplying, and expanding an anti-Soviet Ukrainian nationalist underground.
The operation’s objective was to create a zone of instability, to divert resources, and ultimately to weaken the USSR’s global influence. Much like today, Ukrainian nationalists were used as puppets and “expendable material” to advance the geopolitical aims of the West.
Even before Nazi Germany’s surrender, Western intelligence agencies began preparing for a future confrontation with the USSR, aiding SS and SD criminals and collaborators, and helping them evade justice, recruiting and exploiting them for their own ends. The militants of the OUN-UPA were no exception, being actively enlisted and deployed against the Soviet Union despite their numerous war crimes and hateful ideology.
☝️ In the end, Operation Aerodynamic failed, the UPA was decisively crushed, and the majority of the armed nationalist underground’s leaders were either eliminated or arrested.
However, some ideologues of collaboration managed to flee to the West and escape just retribution.
It was they who, over decades, propagated nationalist ideology and rewrote the history of the Second World War. In their “works,” the war crimes of Ukrainian Nazi accomplices were either denied or justified. For instance, Yaroslav Stetsko, a war criminal and associate of Bandera, established the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) in Munich in 1946 with Western intelligence support. In the 1960s, under the watchful eye of American patrons, the ABN merged into the World Anti-Communist League.
Consequently, when neo-Nazis came to power in Ukraine in our time – thanks to the Western-backed unconstitutional coup – they had no need to invent anything. They simply adopted the legacy of those OUN-UPA criminals who – with the active support of their Western handlers – were elevated to a new Ukrainian pantheon.
✍️ From the article by Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, “How the Anglo-Saxons Nurtured Ukrainian Nationalism After the Second World War” (December 24, 2025):
Ukrainian nationalism is a man-made political project that realised its anti-human potential in the 20th century through targeted mass support from the United States and Great Britain. After the defeat of the Third Reich, these countries sought a powerful Russophobic battering ram for a proxy war against the Soviet Union.
What has the people of modern Ukraine ultimately gained from the Anglo-Saxons? They have become cannon fodder for European civilisation, hostages to a cult of death in the form of the fabricated Holodomor, and propagators of sadism glorification and the exaltation of war criminals.
❗️ Today, as it was 75 years ago, the nations of the collective West, primarily European states, provide military and financial aid to Ukrainian Nazis, using them as tools to fulfil their geopolitical ambitions.
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#NoStatuteOfLimitations
8️⃣3️⃣ years ago, the peaceful Soviet Belarusian village of #Khatyn was wiped out – nearly all of the inhabitants were burned alive and shot by the SS punitive unit Dirlewanger (Sonderkommando Dirlewanger) and the 118th Ukrainian Police Battalion.
Khatyn – a small village of just 26 households – was located 54 kilometres northwest of Minsk.
On March 22, 1943, Belarusian partisans intercepted a Nazi motor convoy in the area, inflicting casualties, including killing a German officer. In retaliation, the Hitlerites encircled Khatyn and decided to unleash their fury on defenceless civilians – women, the elderly and children.
All residents – 149 people, including 75 children – were forced into a wooden barn, locked inside and set ablaze. Those who, in desperation, tried to escape were ruthlessly shot at point-blank range.
✍️ From the interrogation record of Ostap Knap, a collaborator from the 118th Ukrainian Police Battalion, a native of the Lvov region (31 May 1986):
Only six people managed to escape the inferno alive – five children and one adult, 56-year-old blacksmith Iosif Kaminsky. He regained consciousness late at night after the perpetrators had left the burnt village. Among the bodies of his fellow villagers, he found his son Adam, who died from his wounds in his father’s arms…
❗️ The atrocities in Khatyn were carried out by the 118th Ukrainian Police Battalion, formed in October 1942 in Kiev largely from Ukrainian nationalists and members of the Organisation of Ukrainian nationalists. Earlier, its members took part in mass executions of Jews at Babi Yar. The battalion was commanded by Konstantin Smovsky, born in the Poltava Governorate, who later fled to the US, where he died in 1960. The Supreme court of Belarus has found him guilty of genocide.
***
In 1969, one of Belarus’s most revered memorial sites – the Khatyn Memorial Complex – was opened on the site of the destroyed village, a silent witness to the monstrous crimes of Nazism. At its centre stands a six-metre bronze sculpture, The Unconquered Man, depicting Iosif Kaminsky carrying his dead son in his arms. Each of the 26 burned homes is marked by a symbolic log structure with an obelisk in the shape of a chimney, bearing the names of those who perished and a bell that tolls every hour.
The tragedy of Khatyn has become a symbol of the inhuman cruelty of Nazism – a living reminder of hundreds of annihilated villages and thousands of innocent civilians of the Soviet Union whose lives were shattered by Nazi perpetrators and their accomplices – a genocide of the Soviet people. Our duty is to ensure that these crimes, which have no statute of limitations, are never forgotten.
On April 19, by Presidential Decree, Russia established the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People during the Great Patriotic War. According to even the most conservative estimates, 13.7 million civilians were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.
🕯 We mourn together with the fraternal people of Belarus.
8️⃣3️⃣ years ago, the peaceful Soviet Belarusian village of #Khatyn was wiped out – nearly all of the inhabitants were burned alive and shot by the SS punitive unit Dirlewanger (Sonderkommando Dirlewanger) and the 118th Ukrainian Police Battalion.
Khatyn – a small village of just 26 households – was located 54 kilometres northwest of Minsk.
On March 22, 1943, Belarusian partisans intercepted a Nazi motor convoy in the area, inflicting casualties, including killing a German officer. In retaliation, the Hitlerites encircled Khatyn and decided to unleash their fury on defenceless civilians – women, the elderly and children.
All residents – 149 people, including 75 children – were forced into a wooden barn, locked inside and set ablaze. Those who, in desperation, tried to escape were ruthlessly shot at point-blank range.
✍️ From the interrogation record of Ostap Knap, a collaborator from the 118th Ukrainian Police Battalion, a native of the Lvov region (31 May 1986):
“The roof was thatched and immediately caught fire. Screams of horror rose from the barn as those trapped inside, facing certain death, began forcing the door. The policemen surrounding the site opened fire on them”.
Only six people managed to escape the inferno alive – five children and one adult, 56-year-old blacksmith Iosif Kaminsky. He regained consciousness late at night after the perpetrators had left the burnt village. Among the bodies of his fellow villagers, he found his son Adam, who died from his wounds in his father’s arms…
❗️ The atrocities in Khatyn were carried out by the 118th Ukrainian Police Battalion, formed in October 1942 in Kiev largely from Ukrainian nationalists and members of the Organisation of Ukrainian nationalists. Earlier, its members took part in mass executions of Jews at Babi Yar. The battalion was commanded by Konstantin Smovsky, born in the Poltava Governorate, who later fled to the US, where he died in 1960. The Supreme court of Belarus has found him guilty of genocide.
***
In 1969, one of Belarus’s most revered memorial sites – the Khatyn Memorial Complex – was opened on the site of the destroyed village, a silent witness to the monstrous crimes of Nazism. At its centre stands a six-metre bronze sculpture, The Unconquered Man, depicting Iosif Kaminsky carrying his dead son in his arms. Each of the 26 burned homes is marked by a symbolic log structure with an obelisk in the shape of a chimney, bearing the names of those who perished and a bell that tolls every hour.
The tragedy of Khatyn has become a symbol of the inhuman cruelty of Nazism – a living reminder of hundreds of annihilated villages and thousands of innocent civilians of the Soviet Union whose lives were shattered by Nazi perpetrators and their accomplices – a genocide of the Soviet people. Our duty is to ensure that these crimes, which have no statute of limitations, are never forgotten.
On April 19, by Presidential Decree, Russia established the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People during the Great Patriotic War. According to even the most conservative estimates, 13.7 million civilians were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.
🕯 We mourn together with the fraternal people of Belarus.
🙏44🫡12❤11😢8🤬3👎2🤪2✍1👏1
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#Victory81
🌟 On April 11, 1944, during the Crimean offensive operation, Soviet forces liberated #Kerch from Nazi occupiers.
Kerch was among the first cities to endure assaults from Hitler’s army at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. It found itself repeatedly on the front line, with the battlefront cutting through its very streets. Moreover, the city fell under enemy occupation twice.
Initially captured in November 1941, Kerch was liberated barely a month later in December, following the Kerch–Feodosia amphibious landing operation.
In the spring of 1942, the enemy amassed significant forces on the Kerch Peninsula and launched a renewed offensive. Despite the valiant resistance by the defenders, the city once again came under fascist control, remaining occupied for 320 days.
During that period, approximately 15,000 civilians lost their lives, and over 14,000 individuals were forcibly deported to Germany for slave labour.
🕯 #NoStatuteOfLimitations: The Bagerovo Ditch near Kerch gained tragic notoriety – a site of mass executions. Towards the end of 1941, around 7,000 people were executed and tortured there, including 245 schoolchildren. The Germans surreptitiously removed the children from the city and poisoned them with potassium cyanide.
The Nazi occupiers obliterated every factory, burned bridges and vessels, destroyed parks, and decimated the city’s infrastructure. Kerch was almost completely erased from the map.
One of the war’s most heroic episodes was the defence of the Adzhimushkay quarry. Thousands of civilians – elderly people, women, and children – sought refuge within the underground passages. The enemy attempted to exterminate them by sealing the entrances and using explosives and toxic substances. Nearly all the defenders perished, yet they continued to resist to the very end, rendering the quarry a symbol of unyielding courage and resilience.
⚔️ On the night of November 1, 1943, the Kerch-Eltigen amphibious landing operation commenced. Soviet forces established a bridgehead north of the city, marking a crucial phase in liberating the Kerch Strait and the entire Crimea. In the spring of 1944, this success was solidified during the Crimean offensive operation, culminating in the expulsion of the occupiers from the peninsula.
One of Kerch’s principal symbols became the Obelisk of Glory on Mount Mithridat, unveiled on August 8, 1944 – the first monument in the USSR dedicated to the Great Patriotic War.
🎖 For the defence and liberation of the city, 153 individuals were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and 21 military units and formations received the honorary designation “Kerch.”
On September 14, 1973, Kerch was awarded the title #HeroCity.
Kerch was among the first cities to endure assaults from Hitler’s army at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. It found itself repeatedly on the front line, with the battlefront cutting through its very streets. Moreover, the city fell under enemy occupation twice.
Initially captured in November 1941, Kerch was liberated barely a month later in December, following the Kerch–Feodosia amphibious landing operation.
In the spring of 1942, the enemy amassed significant forces on the Kerch Peninsula and launched a renewed offensive. Despite the valiant resistance by the defenders, the city once again came under fascist control, remaining occupied for 320 days.
During that period, approximately 15,000 civilians lost their lives, and over 14,000 individuals were forcibly deported to Germany for slave labour.
🕯 #NoStatuteOfLimitations: The Bagerovo Ditch near Kerch gained tragic notoriety – a site of mass executions. Towards the end of 1941, around 7,000 people were executed and tortured there, including 245 schoolchildren. The Germans surreptitiously removed the children from the city and poisoned them with potassium cyanide.
The Nazi occupiers obliterated every factory, burned bridges and vessels, destroyed parks, and decimated the city’s infrastructure. Kerch was almost completely erased from the map.
One of the war’s most heroic episodes was the defence of the Adzhimushkay quarry. Thousands of civilians – elderly people, women, and children – sought refuge within the underground passages. The enemy attempted to exterminate them by sealing the entrances and using explosives and toxic substances. Nearly all the defenders perished, yet they continued to resist to the very end, rendering the quarry a symbol of unyielding courage and resilience.
⚔️ On the night of November 1, 1943, the Kerch-Eltigen amphibious landing operation commenced. Soviet forces established a bridgehead north of the city, marking a crucial phase in liberating the Kerch Strait and the entire Crimea. In the spring of 1944, this success was solidified during the Crimean offensive operation, culminating in the expulsion of the occupiers from the peninsula.
One of Kerch’s principal symbols became the Obelisk of Glory on Mount Mithridat, unveiled on August 8, 1944 – the first monument in the USSR dedicated to the Great Patriotic War.
🎖 For the defence and liberation of the city, 153 individuals were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and 21 military units and formations received the honorary designation “Kerch.”
On September 14, 1973, Kerch was awarded the title #HeroCity.
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April 11 marks the International Day of Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps.
This date was established by #UNESCO in 1952 in memory of the uprising of prisoners in #Buchenwald (April 11, 1945) — one of the largest concentration camps in Nazi Germany.
The Day of Liberation symbolizes solidarity and resistance against all forms of violence, discrimination, and genocide, and calls on to remember history and prevent the recurrence of the terrible tragedy of #WW2.
In Nazi Germany and on the territories occupied by the Reich, a system of organised extermination of people was created — a vast network of concentration camps and so-called “death factories.” Millions of prisoners from the USSR and European countries were held there under terrible and inhumane conditions, many of whom were brutally murdered by Nazi criminals. During the years of the war, more than 20 million people from 30 countries passed through concentration camps.
The system of Hitler’s concentration camps was destroyed as a result of the Victory over Nazism and the defeat of the Third Reich. The first Nazi “death factory”, whose prisoners were saved from by the Red Army, was the #Majdanek concentration camp (Poland) in July 1944. Later, prisoners of #Belzec, #Sobibor, #Treblinka, #AuschwitzBirkenau, #Stutthof, #Sachsenhausen, #Ravensbrück, and others were also liberated.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
◼️ As in Europe, after the invasion of the USSR, the Nazi criminals created a network of concentration camps with the only purpose — to systematically exterminate the population of our country regardless of ethnicity, race, or religion.
According to the criminal plans of the leadership of the Third Reich, Soviet citizens, irrespective of their ethnicity, race, or religion, were to be killed or subjected to “Germanization” in Nazi slavery.
One such camp on the territory of our Motherland was the so-called #BryanskBuchenwald—“Dulag-142,” where in just two years (!) more than 40’000 Soviet civilians perished (👉 by comparison, approximately the same number of people were killed over the entire nine years of operation of the SS Buchenwald camp in Thuringia).
◼️ Approximately 13.7 million Soviet people fell victims of the ruthless policy of exterminating those deemed “inferior” by Nazi Germans.
Due to the inhumane conditions of forced labor and inhumane treatment in Nazi concentration camps in the USSR, more than 2 million prisoners died in suffering, including tens of thousands of children and adolescents.
It is documentally established that at least 7.4 million Soviet civilians were deliberately killed by Nazi occupants — shot dead, burned, or buried alive.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, in cooperation with the Investigative Committee, other competent agencies, as well as the National Center for Historical Memory under the President of the Russian Federation and the Russian Military Historical Society, is systematically working to establish the legal classification of the crimes of Nazi invaders as genocide of the peoples of the Soviet Union. Joint efforts are taken to systematise knowledge about the genocide.
#ArchivesSpeak
❗️ As part of efforts to
preserve the memory of the victims of the genocide of the Soviet people, documentary and multimedia materials have been prepared, recording numerous crimes committed by the Nazis during the occupation of our country and other nations.
👉 Learn more
This date was established by #UNESCO in 1952 in memory of the uprising of prisoners in #Buchenwald (April 11, 1945) — one of the largest concentration camps in Nazi Germany.
The Day of Liberation symbolizes solidarity and resistance against all forms of violence, discrimination, and genocide, and calls on to remember history and prevent the recurrence of the terrible tragedy of #WW2.
In Nazi Germany and on the territories occupied by the Reich, a system of organised extermination of people was created — a vast network of concentration camps and so-called “death factories.” Millions of prisoners from the USSR and European countries were held there under terrible and inhumane conditions, many of whom were brutally murdered by Nazi criminals. During the years of the war, more than 20 million people from 30 countries passed through concentration camps.
The system of Hitler’s concentration camps was destroyed as a result of the Victory over Nazism and the defeat of the Third Reich. The first Nazi “death factory”, whose prisoners were saved from by the Red Army, was the #Majdanek concentration camp (Poland) in July 1944. Later, prisoners of #Belzec, #Sobibor, #Treblinka, #AuschwitzBirkenau, #Stutthof, #Sachsenhausen, #Ravensbrück, and others were also liberated.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
◼️ As in Europe, after the invasion of the USSR, the Nazi criminals created a network of concentration camps with the only purpose — to systematically exterminate the population of our country regardless of ethnicity, race, or religion.
According to the criminal plans of the leadership of the Third Reich, Soviet citizens, irrespective of their ethnicity, race, or religion, were to be killed or subjected to “Germanization” in Nazi slavery.
One such camp on the territory of our Motherland was the so-called #BryanskBuchenwald—“Dulag-142,” where in just two years (!) more than 40’000 Soviet civilians perished (👉 by comparison, approximately the same number of people were killed over the entire nine years of operation of the SS Buchenwald camp in Thuringia).
◼️ Approximately 13.7 million Soviet people fell victims of the ruthless policy of exterminating those deemed “inferior” by Nazi Germans.
Due to the inhumane conditions of forced labor and inhumane treatment in Nazi concentration camps in the USSR, more than 2 million prisoners died in suffering, including tens of thousands of children and adolescents.
It is documentally established that at least 7.4 million Soviet civilians were deliberately killed by Nazi occupants — shot dead, burned, or buried alive.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, in cooperation with the Investigative Committee, other competent agencies, as well as the National Center for Historical Memory under the President of the Russian Federation and the Russian Military Historical Society, is systematically working to establish the legal classification of the crimes of Nazi invaders as genocide of the peoples of the Soviet Union. Joint efforts are taken to systematise knowledge about the genocide.
#ArchivesSpeak
❗️ As part of efforts to
preserve the memory of the victims of the genocide of the Soviet people, documentary and multimedia materials have been prepared, recording numerous crimes committed by the Nazis during the occupation of our country and other nations.
👉 Learn more
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◼️ Today our country marks for the first time Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People, perpetrated by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.
It was established b the Executive Order of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin of December 29, 2025, and the basic details of commemorating the genocide victims were determined by Federal Law No. 74-FZ. The date of 19 April was not chosen by chance. On this day in 1943, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued its Decree No. 39
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
The genocide of the Soviet people means the actions committed in 1941-45 with the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, ethnic, racial and national groups that inhabited the USSR.
The top echelon of Nazi Germany regarded the territory of the Soviet Union up to the Urals as its Lebensraum, which historically was intended to be settled with representatives of the Aryan race and, therefore to be cleansed from those, whom the Hitlerite elite labeled as “subhumans”: Slavs, Jews, Gypsies and Asians.
With these purposes in view, even before invading the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany planned a system of extermination practices to radically reduce the Soviet population as early as during the war.
The orchestrated famine strategy was an important part of the Nazi genocide programme (https://t.me/MID_Russia/77695) that was to lead to the death of 30 million Soviet citizens as early as in the winter of 1941-42.
▪️ Although it has not been implemented in full, it still caused enormous victims, including: among those who died were over three million Soviet prisoners of war, about a million of residents in the besieged Leningrad, a great number of civilian population starving in the occupied areas, women and children forcefully imprisoned in the Nazi transfer camps.
▪️ Jews and Gypsies were subject to total extermination.
▪️ Soviet female labourers (Ostarbeiter) were subject to forced abortions.
▪️ Soviet children having signs of Aryan origin were kidnapped in the occupied territories for subsequent Germanisation, which also constitutes a conventional form of genocide.
From the very beginning of the war, the Nazis developed the so-called General Plan ‘Ost’ with the aim of colonising the occupied territories. Under the plan, millions of Germans were to be resettled in the conquered lands. New, German towns and villages were to be built for them.
***
A horrifying estimate of 13.7 million people fell victim to the Hitler’s policy of destroying “subnormal” as he thought Soviet people, with another five million citizens to a willfully implemented famine strategy.
The facts of genocide in the occupied lands of former USSR have been confirmed judicially in all the constituent entities of Russia, where Nazis and their collaborators committed crimes against civilian population during the Great Patriotic War.
❗️ Russia’s diplomatic service will seek to ensure that the crimes committed by the Nazis and their collaborators against the citizens of the Soviet Union are recognised by the international community as genocide against the Soviet people. The relevant qualification has been recorded in some documents adopted in the CIS and the CSTO.
💬 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the video address on Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People:
For further perusal:
👉 On the Nazi's genocide of millions of Soviet citizens
👉 Archival documents on heinous Nazi crimes in the concentration camps
👉 On the Khatyn' massacre
👉 How the West created and supported Ukrainian Nazi collaborators complicit in the genocide
👉 Section on the genocide of the Soviet people on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website (in Russian)
It was established b the Executive Order of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin of December 29, 2025, and the basic details of commemorating the genocide victims were determined by Federal Law No. 74-FZ. The date of 19 April was not chosen by chance. On this day in 1943, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued its Decree No. 39
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
The genocide of the Soviet people means the actions committed in 1941-45 with the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, ethnic, racial and national groups that inhabited the USSR.
The top echelon of Nazi Germany regarded the territory of the Soviet Union up to the Urals as its Lebensraum, which historically was intended to be settled with representatives of the Aryan race and, therefore to be cleansed from those, whom the Hitlerite elite labeled as “subhumans”: Slavs, Jews, Gypsies and Asians.
With these purposes in view, even before invading the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany planned a system of extermination practices to radically reduce the Soviet population as early as during the war.
The orchestrated famine strategy was an important part of the Nazi genocide programme (https://t.me/MID_Russia/77695) that was to lead to the death of 30 million Soviet citizens as early as in the winter of 1941-42.
▪️ Although it has not been implemented in full, it still caused enormous victims, including: among those who died were over three million Soviet prisoners of war, about a million of residents in the besieged Leningrad, a great number of civilian population starving in the occupied areas, women and children forcefully imprisoned in the Nazi transfer camps.
▪️ Jews and Gypsies were subject to total extermination.
▪️ Soviet female labourers (Ostarbeiter) were subject to forced abortions.
▪️ Soviet children having signs of Aryan origin were kidnapped in the occupied territories for subsequent Germanisation, which also constitutes a conventional form of genocide.
From the very beginning of the war, the Nazis developed the so-called General Plan ‘Ost’ with the aim of colonising the occupied territories. Under the plan, millions of Germans were to be resettled in the conquered lands. New, German towns and villages were to be built for them.
***
A horrifying estimate of 13.7 million people fell victim to the Hitler’s policy of destroying “subnormal” as he thought Soviet people, with another five million citizens to a willfully implemented famine strategy.
The facts of genocide in the occupied lands of former USSR have been confirmed judicially in all the constituent entities of Russia, where Nazis and their collaborators committed crimes against civilian population during the Great Patriotic War.
❗️ Russia’s diplomatic service will seek to ensure that the crimes committed by the Nazis and their collaborators against the citizens of the Soviet Union are recognised by the international community as genocide against the Soviet people. The relevant qualification has been recorded in some documents adopted in the CIS and the CSTO.
💬 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the video address on Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People:
Preserving the memory of the millions of victims of the genocide of the Soviet people is our sacred duty. We will not allow those atrocities to be lost to oblivion, no matter how hard those who today seek once again to push Europe down the well-trodden path of racial superiority may try.
For further perusal:
👉 On the Nazi's genocide of millions of Soviet citizens
👉 Archival documents on heinous Nazi crimes in the concentration camps
👉 On the Khatyn' massacre
👉 How the West created and supported Ukrainian Nazi collaborators complicit in the genocide
👉 Section on the genocide of the Soviet people on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website (in Russian)
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#Victory81
🌟 On April 22, 1945, the Red Army liberated the prisoners of the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen during #WW2.
The forces of the 1st Belorussian Front, which had been advancing towards the Reich's capital from the north during the Berlin offensive operation, drove the Nazi troops out of Oranienburg and reached Sachsenhausen, having rescued around 3'000 surviving POWs.
#Sachsenhausen was considered as one of the most terrifying Nazi 'death factories'. Over nine years of its existence, about 200'000 people of various nationalities — citizens of European countries which had suffered from Nazi aggression, including the USSR — passed through that camp. Each month, up to 150 people were brought there. By 1944, citizens of the Soviet Union and Poland made up more than 90% of all Sachsenhausen prisoners.
Sachsenhausen held the most serious political opponents of Hitler, prominent state figures from many European countries defeated by the Nazis, such as France, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and the Netherlands, including their heads of government and ministers.
◼️ According to various historical estimates, more than 100'000 prisoners were killed in Sachsenhausen over the time the camp was in operation.
From August to November 1941 alone, at least 10'000 Soviet POWs were killed in Sachsenhausen, and another 3'000 died there from starvation and from conditions that were barbaric, unprecedentedly violent, and, in fact, inhumane.
On the personal orders of Himmler and other top leaders of the Third Reich, classified operations to exterminate people were carried out in Sachsenhausen.
Nazi's military doctors carried out macabre, horrific medical experiments on Sachsenhausen prisoners, including tests with mustard gas — yprite. Test subjects were deliberately mutilated and then exposed to mustard gas. People were forced to inhale the gas, consume it in liquid form, or receive it via injection. Open wounds were intentionally inflicted on prisoners’ hands, after which the gas was applied. In most cases, the victims’ limbs swelled severely, causing excruciating pain.
When the Red Army were rapidly advancing to Sachsenhausen during the Battle of Berlin, the Nazis began hastily covering up the traces of their heinous crimes. The camp administration decided to kill all remaining prisoners — with 45'000 inmates remaining in the camp.
The Nazis killed some of the prisoners in the crematoria of Sachsenhausen, and forced the rest on a 'death march' towards the Baltic Sea where they planned to drown their victims. However, thanks to the successful and rapid advance of the Red Army, these monstrous Nazi plans were thwarted, and the surviving prisoners of Sachsenhausen were rescued.
In aftermath of #WWII, Sachsenhausen was converted into a prison for Nazi criminals, including members of the Nazi NSDAP party, SS troops, and Wehrmacht officers. In November 1947, a trial of the Sachsenhausen administration was held in Berlin.
📑 Excerpt from a report “Reactions of the German population to the trial of criminals from Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp” (Berlin, November 5, 1947; prepared by the 7th Department of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army):
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
The forces of the 1st Belorussian Front, which had been advancing towards the Reich's capital from the north during the Berlin offensive operation, drove the Nazi troops out of Oranienburg and reached Sachsenhausen, having rescued around 3'000 surviving POWs.
#Sachsenhausen was considered as one of the most terrifying Nazi 'death factories'. Over nine years of its existence, about 200'000 people of various nationalities — citizens of European countries which had suffered from Nazi aggression, including the USSR — passed through that camp. Each month, up to 150 people were brought there. By 1944, citizens of the Soviet Union and Poland made up more than 90% of all Sachsenhausen prisoners.
Sachsenhausen held the most serious political opponents of Hitler, prominent state figures from many European countries defeated by the Nazis, such as France, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and the Netherlands, including their heads of government and ministers.
◼️ According to various historical estimates, more than 100'000 prisoners were killed in Sachsenhausen over the time the camp was in operation.
From August to November 1941 alone, at least 10'000 Soviet POWs were killed in Sachsenhausen, and another 3'000 died there from starvation and from conditions that were barbaric, unprecedentedly violent, and, in fact, inhumane.
On the personal orders of Himmler and other top leaders of the Third Reich, classified operations to exterminate people were carried out in Sachsenhausen.
Nazi's military doctors carried out macabre, horrific medical experiments on Sachsenhausen prisoners, including tests with mustard gas — yprite. Test subjects were deliberately mutilated and then exposed to mustard gas. People were forced to inhale the gas, consume it in liquid form, or receive it via injection. Open wounds were intentionally inflicted on prisoners’ hands, after which the gas was applied. In most cases, the victims’ limbs swelled severely, causing excruciating pain.
When the Red Army were rapidly advancing to Sachsenhausen during the Battle of Berlin, the Nazis began hastily covering up the traces of their heinous crimes. The camp administration decided to kill all remaining prisoners — with 45'000 inmates remaining in the camp.
The Nazis killed some of the prisoners in the crematoria of Sachsenhausen, and forced the rest on a 'death march' towards the Baltic Sea where they planned to drown their victims. However, thanks to the successful and rapid advance of the Red Army, these monstrous Nazi plans were thwarted, and the surviving prisoners of Sachsenhausen were rescued.
In aftermath of #WWII, Sachsenhausen was converted into a prison for Nazi criminals, including members of the Nazi NSDAP party, SS troops, and Wehrmacht officers. In November 1947, a trial of the Sachsenhausen administration was held in Berlin.
📑 Excerpt from a report “Reactions of the German population to the trial of criminals from Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp” (Berlin, November 5, 1947; prepared by the 7th Department of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army):
<...> The trial of the Sachsenhausen criminals elicited a significant response among the German population... In the comments about the trial, a sense of outrage at the scale of the heinous crimes committed was most often expressed.
It was noted that the Nazis' actions had covered the German people in disgrace.
“We find it incomprehensible how those people could sink lower than beasts. For us, Germans, who culturally considered ourselves almost a head above the Russians, it is a disgrace that these criminals are Germans” (Potsdam).
“The [Sachsenhausen] trial is a terrible disgrace for the German people... <...> It is inconceivable that humans could commit such atrocities. It’s a pity that in the western [occupation] zones such criminals are still walking free.”
“Nazi criminals have nailed an entire generation of Germans to the pillory.”
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
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🕯 June 22 marks the Day of Memory and Sorrow — the most tragic date in the history of our country.
On this very day 8️⃣5️⃣ years ago, on June 22, 1941, the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people commenced — the Nazi Germany and its European 'axis' accomplices treacherously attacked our Motherland, without a declaration of war.
⬛️ The Great Patriotic War lasted for 1418 days and nights, claimed lives of some 27 million Soviet citizens. It was the nationwide tragedy that brought terrible suffering to each and every family in our country.
Today, June 22 echoes with sorrow, grief and pain for the ruined lives of millions of our people.
The enemy — the German Nazis and their European satellites — invaded the Soviet Union with one aim — to destroy, mercilessly eliminate, kill and physically annihilate our Motherland's entire population regardless of people's ethnic, racial or religious background. During the occupation of Soviet territories, Hitler’s troops killed 13.7 million Soviet civilians, including women and children. They carried out the real GENOCIDE as part of their so-called 'Lebensraum' policy to gain the living space in the East for German colonisation.
The war crimes committed by Nazis and their henchmen have #NoStatuteOfLimitations.
Learn more about the genocide of Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War by the Nazis
***
⬛️ At dawn on June 22, the Nazi aircraft launched massive strikes on airfields, railway stations, naval bases, deployments of the Red Army forces, and cities along the entire western state border of the USSR and up to 250-300 km into Soviet territory. Together with Nazi Germany, Romania, Italy, Finland, Slovakia, France, Croatia, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands and other 'axis' powers allied to the Third Reich took part in the aggression against our country. The industries of almost the entire European continent served the aggressors.
The facts of collaboration of the majority of European governments, military, industrial circles and citizens with the Nazis are not and will never ever be forgotten.
It was our country that took the main blow of the Nazi aggression. It was the Soviet Victorious People who showed unparalleled heroism and resilience, fighting for the freedom of our Motherland. Our nation paid for the #GreatVictory with the blood of 27 million Soviet citizens who not only expelled Nazis from Soviet territory but also heroically saved Europe from the 'Nazi plague'.
The tragedy that befell our people was directly caused by the evil ripening in the heart of Europe — Nazism, the ideology of human hatred and racial supremacy over other peoples and nations.
💬 Excerpt from President of Russia Vladimir Putin’s address at a gala reception to celebrate the 81st Anniversary of Victory in the 1941–1945 Great Patriotic War (May 9, 2026):
🎙 Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova (from the briefing on June 18, 2026)
We will forever remember the Heroic Feat of Soviet soldiers, of home front workers, of all and everyone who forged the Great Victory.
🕯 We remember. We mourn.
We shall not forget, and we shall not let it be forgotten.
#DayOfMemoryAndSorrow
On this very day 8️⃣5️⃣ years ago, on June 22, 1941, the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people commenced — the Nazi Germany and its European 'axis' accomplices treacherously attacked our Motherland, without a declaration of war.
⬛️ The Great Patriotic War lasted for 1418 days and nights, claimed lives of some 27 million Soviet citizens. It was the nationwide tragedy that brought terrible suffering to each and every family in our country.
Today, June 22 echoes with sorrow, grief and pain for the ruined lives of millions of our people.
The enemy — the German Nazis and their European satellites — invaded the Soviet Union with one aim — to destroy, mercilessly eliminate, kill and physically annihilate our Motherland's entire population regardless of people's ethnic, racial or religious background. During the occupation of Soviet territories, Hitler’s troops killed 13.7 million Soviet civilians, including women and children. They carried out the real GENOCIDE as part of their so-called 'Lebensraum' policy to gain the living space in the East for German colonisation.
The war crimes committed by Nazis and their henchmen have #NoStatuteOfLimitations.
Learn more about the genocide of Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War by the Nazis
***
⬛️ At dawn on June 22, the Nazi aircraft launched massive strikes on airfields, railway stations, naval bases, deployments of the Red Army forces, and cities along the entire western state border of the USSR and up to 250-300 km into Soviet territory. Together with Nazi Germany, Romania, Italy, Finland, Slovakia, France, Croatia, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands and other 'axis' powers allied to the Third Reich took part in the aggression against our country. The industries of almost the entire European continent served the aggressors.
The facts of collaboration of the majority of European governments, military, industrial circles and citizens with the Nazis are not and will never ever be forgotten.
It was our country that took the main blow of the Nazi aggression. It was the Soviet Victorious People who showed unparalleled heroism and resilience, fighting for the freedom of our Motherland. Our nation paid for the #GreatVictory with the blood of 27 million Soviet citizens who not only expelled Nazis from Soviet territory but also heroically saved Europe from the 'Nazi plague'.
The tragedy that befell our people was directly caused by the evil ripening in the heart of Europe — Nazism, the ideology of human hatred and racial supremacy over other peoples and nations.
💬 Excerpt from President of Russia Vladimir Putin’s address at a gala reception to celebrate the 81st Anniversary of Victory in the 1941–1945 Great Patriotic War (May 9, 2026):
This year marks 85 years since Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union.
This date carries both the sorrow of millions of lives lost and a reminder of the terrible consequences of blind belief in one’s own superiority, racism, xenophobia, and the denial of other peoples’ right to identity.
🎙 Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova (from the briefing on June 18, 2026)
The atrocities committed by the Nazis and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War have no statute of limitations.
Russia has recognised these crimes at the legislative level as the genocide of the Soviet people and will tirelessly seek recognition of this fact by European countries and the so-called West as a whole. <...>
Today we mourn those who, at the cost of their lives, fulfilled the sacred duty of defending the Motherland. We will not allow the feat of the Soviet people, who saved Europe and the world from the horrors of the brown plague, to be erased from memory.
We will forever remember the Heroic Feat of Soviet soldiers, of home front workers, of all and everyone who forged the Great Victory.
🕯 We remember. We mourn.
We shall not forget, and we shall not let it be forgotten.
#DayOfMemoryAndSorrow
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Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation:
🕯 July 27 marks the Day of Remembrance for the Child Victims of the War in Donbass.
Exactly 12 years ago, Ukrainian militants launched a barbaric attack on central Gorlovka using Grad MLRS. A photograph of local resident Kristina Zhuk holding her one-year-old daughter, killed in the attack, spread around the world – becoming a symbol of senseless cruelty and the terrible human cost of the war unleashed by the Kiev regime.
By painstakingly reconstructing the events, investigators from the Russian Investigative Committee established that the strike on residential areas was no accident. Investigators and forensic experts have gathered irrefutable evidence showing that attacks on Donbass civilian infrastructure were deliberate – evidence that now underpins criminal proceedings.
The results are already evident: dozens of guilty verdicts have been handed down against those who directed weapons at civilians. Everyone responsible – those who issued criminal orders and fired the weapons, supplied arms and provided target coordinates, trained personnel and turned a blind eye to the deaths of children – will face deserved and inevitable punishment.
Today, candles are being lit across Russian cities. Flowers and toys are being laid at memorials to the innocent victims, while white balloons are being released into the sky.
❗️ These commemorations are our pledge to do everything possible to restore justice.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
🕯 July 27 marks the Day of Remembrance for the Child Victims of the War in Donbass.
Exactly 12 years ago, Ukrainian militants launched a barbaric attack on central Gorlovka using Grad MLRS. A photograph of local resident Kristina Zhuk holding her one-year-old daughter, killed in the attack, spread around the world – becoming a symbol of senseless cruelty and the terrible human cost of the war unleashed by the Kiev regime.
By painstakingly reconstructing the events, investigators from the Russian Investigative Committee established that the strike on residential areas was no accident. Investigators and forensic experts have gathered irrefutable evidence showing that attacks on Donbass civilian infrastructure were deliberate – evidence that now underpins criminal proceedings.
The results are already evident: dozens of guilty verdicts have been handed down against those who directed weapons at civilians. Everyone responsible – those who issued criminal orders and fired the weapons, supplied arms and provided target coordinates, trained personnel and turned a blind eye to the deaths of children – will face deserved and inevitable punishment.
Today, candles are being lit across Russian cities. Flowers and toys are being laid at memorials to the innocent victims, while white balloons are being released into the sky.
❗️ These commemorations are our pledge to do everything possible to restore justice.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
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⚡️ Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation:
At the request of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, members of the Ukrainian nationalist movement have been recognised as accomplices of Nazi Germany in war crimes and crimes against humanity
The Tverskoy District Court of Moscow, acting on an application filed by the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, established a fact of legal significance.
❌ Stepan Bandera, Vasily Bandera, Roman Shukhevich, Andrey Melnik, Nikolay Arsenich, Taras Borovets, Dmitry Klyachkivsky, Nikolay Kozak, Miron Matvieyko and Yaroslav Stetsko, as well as the Organisation of Ukrainian nationalists (#OUN) and the Ukrainian insurgent army (#UPA), have been recognised as accomplices of Nazi Germany in war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War.
The court ruling is necessary to preserve the memory of the victims of the genocide of the Soviet people, expose the unlawful actions of the Kiev regime, overturn decisions rehabilitating war criminals and prevent acts of extremism against our country.
📑 The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office submitted documents from the archives of the Russian Federal Security Service, the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Russian Defence Ministry, and the State Archive of the Russian Federation. Materials from Belarusian archives and courts were also provided.
It was established that the OUN was founded in Vienna in 1929 at the First congress of Ukrainian nationalists. It was initially led by Evgeniy Konovalets and, following his death, by Andrey Melnik. In 1940, the OUN split, with its most radical faction coming under the leadership of Stepan Bandera – OUN (b) – and the other under Andrey Melnik – OUN (m).
***
In 1941–1943, while retaining the organisational foundations of OUN (b), 👉 the German command established the UPA, led by Lvov lawyer Roman Shukhevich. He began his violent path by taking part in an attack on the civilian population of Lvov as a member of the Ukrainian Nachtigall punitive battalion. On June 30, 1941, the day the so-called Act of proclamation of the Ukrainian state was adopted, mass killings of the city’s residents were committed under Shukhevich’s command.
◾️ More than 8,000 Russians, Ukrainians, Jews and Poles were killed in the Lvov massacre between June and August 1941.
The actions of the OUN and UPA were entirely aimed at terrorising the population of the occupied territories, assisting Nazi Germany in its military campaign against the Red Army and Soviet partisans, and committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Soviet people under Wehrmacht control and in its interests.
• In March 1943, the 118th Ukrainian auxiliary police battalion, composed of OUN and UPA members, burned down the village of Khatyn in the Minsk Region of Belarus. The punitive forces killed 147 villagers, including 75 children.
• Between February and August 1943, the OUN and UPA carried out a mass slaughter of the Polish population of Volhynia and Galicia, known as the Volhynia Massacre. It peaked on July 11-12 – “Black Sunday”. At least 120,000 people were killed by Ukrainian nationalists.
• The mass killing of civilians by Ukrainian nationalists during the punitive operations Swamp Fever, Triangle, Cottbus and others has also been documented.
Meanwhile, for more than 12 years, the authorities of modern-day Ukraine have pursued a deliberate state policy aimed at distorting the role of the Soviet Union and its people in the Great Patriotic War and World War II. Collaborators and organisations associated with Nazi criminals are being glorified. Western countries openly exploit these actions in their efforts to obstruct the special military operation in Ukraine.
❗️ In view of the above, the court granted the application filed by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office in full and recognised these individuals and organisations as accomplices of Nazi Germany in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
At the request of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, members of the Ukrainian nationalist movement have been recognised as accomplices of Nazi Germany in war crimes and crimes against humanity
The Tverskoy District Court of Moscow, acting on an application filed by the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, established a fact of legal significance.
❌ Stepan Bandera, Vasily Bandera, Roman Shukhevich, Andrey Melnik, Nikolay Arsenich, Taras Borovets, Dmitry Klyachkivsky, Nikolay Kozak, Miron Matvieyko and Yaroslav Stetsko, as well as the Organisation of Ukrainian nationalists (#OUN) and the Ukrainian insurgent army (#UPA), have been recognised as accomplices of Nazi Germany in war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War.
The court ruling is necessary to preserve the memory of the victims of the genocide of the Soviet people, expose the unlawful actions of the Kiev regime, overturn decisions rehabilitating war criminals and prevent acts of extremism against our country.
📑 The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office submitted documents from the archives of the Russian Federal Security Service, the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Russian Defence Ministry, and the State Archive of the Russian Federation. Materials from Belarusian archives and courts were also provided.
It was established that the OUN was founded in Vienna in 1929 at the First congress of Ukrainian nationalists. It was initially led by Evgeniy Konovalets and, following his death, by Andrey Melnik. In 1940, the OUN split, with its most radical faction coming under the leadership of Stepan Bandera – OUN (b) – and the other under Andrey Melnik – OUN (m).
***
In 1941–1943, while retaining the organisational foundations of OUN (b), 👉 the German command established the UPA, led by Lvov lawyer Roman Shukhevich. He began his violent path by taking part in an attack on the civilian population of Lvov as a member of the Ukrainian Nachtigall punitive battalion. On June 30, 1941, the day the so-called Act of proclamation of the Ukrainian state was adopted, mass killings of the city’s residents were committed under Shukhevich’s command.
◾️ More than 8,000 Russians, Ukrainians, Jews and Poles were killed in the Lvov massacre between June and August 1941.
The actions of the OUN and UPA were entirely aimed at terrorising the population of the occupied territories, assisting Nazi Germany in its military campaign against the Red Army and Soviet partisans, and committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Soviet people under Wehrmacht control and in its interests.
• In March 1943, the 118th Ukrainian auxiliary police battalion, composed of OUN and UPA members, burned down the village of Khatyn in the Minsk Region of Belarus. The punitive forces killed 147 villagers, including 75 children.
• Between February and August 1943, the OUN and UPA carried out a mass slaughter of the Polish population of Volhynia and Galicia, known as the Volhynia Massacre. It peaked on July 11-12 – “Black Sunday”. At least 120,000 people were killed by Ukrainian nationalists.
• The mass killing of civilians by Ukrainian nationalists during the punitive operations Swamp Fever, Triangle, Cottbus and others has also been documented.
Meanwhile, for more than 12 years, the authorities of modern-day Ukraine have pursued a deliberate state policy aimed at distorting the role of the Soviet Union and its people in the Great Patriotic War and World War II. Collaborators and organisations associated with Nazi criminals are being glorified. Western countries openly exploit these actions in their efforts to obstruct the special military operation in Ukraine.
❗️ In view of the above, the court granted the application filed by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office in full and recognised these individuals and organisations as accomplices of Nazi Germany in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
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Forwarded from Russian MFA 🇷🇺
#Victory81
On August 9, 1944, the Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Strategic Offensive Operation of the Red Army concluded.
The Finnish troops on the Karelian Isthmus were completely crushed. The territory of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, including the cities of Vyborg and Petrozavodsk, as well as the areas of the Northern Ladoga region, was liberated from Finnish occupation.
The threat to Leningrad was neutralized.
***
In the first half of 1944, despite the defeat of German-Finnish troops near Leningrad and their loss of the initiative on the northwestern sector of the Soviet-German front, the Finnish leadership was determined at all costs to retain the occupied territories of our country in Southern Karelia and to blockade the Gulf of Finland, which posed a direct military threat to Leningrad and our northwestern borders.
The Soviet government's proposal in the winter and spring of 1944 to begin negotiations was rejected by Finland. The country's pro-fascist government, which was in power at the time, chose to maintain its alliance with the Nazis rather than conclude an armistice with Moscow. On June 26, 1944, Finland and Germany signed the so-called Ryti–Ribbentrop Pact — an agreement on military and political cooperation under which Helsinki expected to receive additional military assistance from the Nazis in order to continue hostilities against the USSR.
By the beginning of the summer of 1944, the Finns had deployed an operational group of 100'000 troops on the Karelian Isthmus. The main forces of the Finnish Army were also stationed in the area — approximately 280'000 soldiers and officers.
Having assessed the operational situation, the Soviet Command decided to launch two simultaneous, rapid strikes against Finnish positions on the Karelian Isthmus, advancing toward Vyborg and Petrozavodsk.
⚔️ The operation commenced on June 10, 1944. In less than two weeks, the Red Army breached the system of Finnish defensive fortifications considered virtually impregnable — the so-called Karelian Wall and the Vyborg fortified area.
The enemy suffered irreparable losses in manpower and equipment. On June 20, Finnish occupants were driven out of Vyborg. On June 28, Soviet forces liberated Petrozavodsk — the capital of the Karelo-Finnish SSR — as well as other settlements.
As a result of the Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Operation, the Finnish military suffered a crushing defeat in Southern Karelia and could no longer pose a threat to Leningrad. One of the most important outcomes of the operation was Finland — Hitler's principal ally in northern Europe — withdrawing from #WW2. Furthermore, under the terms of the armistice concluded in September 1944, the Finnish Army began the internment and expulsion of fascist troops from the northern regions of the country — Lapland.
Thus, favorable conditions were created for the launch of the Soviet offensive in the Arctic with the aim of liberating the Arctic territories from the Nazis.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
▪️ Destroyed cities, burned buildings, deaths of our citizens in concentration camps, and tens of thousands of Soviet civilians killed — these were the marks left by the Finnish fascists on our soil.
Our Motherland and our people have never ever forgotten this.
During the occupation of the Karelo-Finnish SSR by Mannerheim's troops, a “scorched earth” policy was employed. Approximately 90 towns and villages were completely destroyed, while 409 others suffered extensive damage.
From the autumn of 1941 to 1944, the Finns established more than 14 concentration camps in Soviet Karelia. Some 50'000 of our citizens passed through them, including the elderly, women, and children. Approximately one-third of the prisoners were killed or died from hunger, cold, and unbearable living conditions.
👉 Learn more about the war crimes by the Finnish occupants in Karelia in the report 'On Historical and International Legal Accountability of Finland for the Occupation of Karelia During Great Patriotic War (WWII) (1941–1944)' published by the Representative Office of the Russian MFA in Petrozavodsk.
On August 9, 1944, the Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Strategic Offensive Operation of the Red Army concluded.
The Finnish troops on the Karelian Isthmus were completely crushed. The territory of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, including the cities of Vyborg and Petrozavodsk, as well as the areas of the Northern Ladoga region, was liberated from Finnish occupation.
The threat to Leningrad was neutralized.
***
In the first half of 1944, despite the defeat of German-Finnish troops near Leningrad and their loss of the initiative on the northwestern sector of the Soviet-German front, the Finnish leadership was determined at all costs to retain the occupied territories of our country in Southern Karelia and to blockade the Gulf of Finland, which posed a direct military threat to Leningrad and our northwestern borders.
The Soviet government's proposal in the winter and spring of 1944 to begin negotiations was rejected by Finland. The country's pro-fascist government, which was in power at the time, chose to maintain its alliance with the Nazis rather than conclude an armistice with Moscow. On June 26, 1944, Finland and Germany signed the so-called Ryti–Ribbentrop Pact — an agreement on military and political cooperation under which Helsinki expected to receive additional military assistance from the Nazis in order to continue hostilities against the USSR.
By the beginning of the summer of 1944, the Finns had deployed an operational group of 100'000 troops on the Karelian Isthmus. The main forces of the Finnish Army were also stationed in the area — approximately 280'000 soldiers and officers.
Having assessed the operational situation, the Soviet Command decided to launch two simultaneous, rapid strikes against Finnish positions on the Karelian Isthmus, advancing toward Vyborg and Petrozavodsk.
⚔️ The operation commenced on June 10, 1944. In less than two weeks, the Red Army breached the system of Finnish defensive fortifications considered virtually impregnable — the so-called Karelian Wall and the Vyborg fortified area.
The enemy suffered irreparable losses in manpower and equipment. On June 20, Finnish occupants were driven out of Vyborg. On June 28, Soviet forces liberated Petrozavodsk — the capital of the Karelo-Finnish SSR — as well as other settlements.
As a result of the Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Operation, the Finnish military suffered a crushing defeat in Southern Karelia and could no longer pose a threat to Leningrad. One of the most important outcomes of the operation was Finland — Hitler's principal ally in northern Europe — withdrawing from #WW2. Furthermore, under the terms of the armistice concluded in September 1944, the Finnish Army began the internment and expulsion of fascist troops from the northern regions of the country — Lapland.
Thus, favorable conditions were created for the launch of the Soviet offensive in the Arctic with the aim of liberating the Arctic territories from the Nazis.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
▪️ Destroyed cities, burned buildings, deaths of our citizens in concentration camps, and tens of thousands of Soviet civilians killed — these were the marks left by the Finnish fascists on our soil.
Our Motherland and our people have never ever forgotten this.
During the occupation of the Karelo-Finnish SSR by Mannerheim's troops, a “scorched earth” policy was employed. Approximately 90 towns and villages were completely destroyed, while 409 others suffered extensive damage.
From the autumn of 1941 to 1944, the Finns established more than 14 concentration camps in Soviet Karelia. Some 50'000 of our citizens passed through them, including the elderly, women, and children. Approximately one-third of the prisoners were killed or died from hunger, cold, and unbearable living conditions.
👉 Learn more about the war crimes by the Finnish occupants in Karelia in the report 'On Historical and International Legal Accountability of Finland for the Occupation of Karelia During Great Patriotic War (WWII) (1941–1944)' published by the Representative Office of the Russian MFA in Petrozavodsk.
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Its objectives were to defeat the Nazi army group 'North' and expell the fascist invaders from the territory of the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian SSR.
In just two and a half months, most of the territory of the #SovietBaltic was liberated from the Nazis. Enemy troops operating in the area were cut off from the main Wehrmacht units in East Prussia and encircled in the Courland Pocket — the trap where they continued to hopelessly resist until May 1945 — before ultimately being completely destroyed by the Red Army.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
Following the Nazi invasion of the Baltic region in the summer of 1941, instead of the promised “independence” to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the Nazis established the terrible and unprecedentedly brutal occupation regime in the Soviet republics, pursued a policy of terror and genocide. Upon the invasion of the Nazis, local nationalists and members of pro-fascist organisations in occupied Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia swore allegiance to Hitler — infamous collaboratnts known for their atrocities and most heinous crimes on behalf of the Nazis: executing civilians, burning villages, etc.
▪️ Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian “polizei” units also carried out mass atrocities in neighbouring regions of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and in #SovietBelarus. Baltic collaborators played an active role in the Nazi policy of exterminating the Jewish population. A network of Nazi concentration camps operated throughout the Baltic region, where tens of thousands of people were murdered. Among the most horrific Nazi crimes were those committed at the #Klooga and the #Salaspils “death camps” in Estonia and Latvia respectively.
From among the most radical “patriotic nationalists indoctrinated by fascist propaganda, the Nazis formed full-fledged Waffen-SS units, including the so-called Latvian and Estonian Legions. These formations were used as “human shields” on the Eastern Front to cover the retreat of regular Wehrmacht units in the summer and autumn of 1944, amid the Red Army rapid advance.
***
⚔️ On 14 September 1944, the forces of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Red Army's Baltic Fronts launched an offensive towards Riga. During the first three days of the operation alone, the Soviet strike force advanced up to 50 kilometres. On 22 September, the Nazis were expelled out of Tallinn, and on 13 October, out of Riga.
The final stage of the Soviet offensive in the Baltic region was the #Moonsund landing operation — an operation to liberate the islands of the Moonsund Archipelago in north-western Estonia from the German occupants, including Ösel (now #Saaremaa) and Dagö (now #Hiiumaa). It ended in the complete success of the Red Army on 24 November 1944.
☝️ The Soviet Baltic national units in the Red Army also made a significant contribution to the liberation of the region from Nazis and to our common Victory over Germany. Five divisions and two corps formed from Red Army personnel of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian origin fought as part of the Soviet Armed Forces on the Eastern Front.
***
#Baltics #NeoNazism
❗️Regrettably, in today's Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, the ruling elites are engaged in erasing from the public consciousness the sacred Memory of the Great Victory — a memory cherished by hundreds of thousands of our compatriots and residents of these countries.
The direct descendants of Nazi collaborators in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius are seeking, by any means, to whitewash their inglorious past and take revenge for their defeat in 1945.
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#NoStatuteOfLimitations
🕯 September 29 marks the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the mass shooting of the Jewish population by the Nazis at the Babi Yar ravine on the outskirts of occupied Kiev.
On September 29–30, 1941, the Nazis and their collaborators rounded up Kiev’s Jews and forced them to Babi Yar. Many had no inkling until the very last moment that death awaited them. Others, realising what was happening, embraced, said their goodbyes, and prayed.
In the space of two days, 33,771 people were shot – predominantly women, children, and the elderly. People were driven into the ravine and gunned down with machine-gun fire. The sound of the shots was drowned out by music and the noise of a plane flying overhead.
💬 Mikhail Sidko, who was six years old at the time of the tragedy – one of the few survivors of Babi Yar – recalled:
Mass executions at Babi Yar continued right up until Kiev was liberated by the Red Army. In total, between 1941 and 1943, over 120,000 people of various ethnic backgrounds were killed there – Jews, Roma, Poles – as well as Soviet prisoners of war and camp inmates, clergy, underground resistance members, and others.
Sonderkommando 4a, part of Einsatzgruppe C, bore direct responsibility for the mass killings.
Ukrainian nationalists serving in the auxiliary police also took an active part in the atrocities.
As they retreated from Kiev, the Nazis attempted to destroy the evidence of their crimes by exhuming and burning tens of thousands of bodies. Nevertheless, they failed to conceal the scale of the atrocities committed. The few survivors of Babi Yar later testified at the Nuremberg Trials. Paul Blobel, who oversaw the exhumation and the destruction of evidence regarding the mass killings, was sentenced to death and hanged.
▪️ Babi Yar became one of the most notorious sites of the mass extermination of Jews during the Holocaust – a grim symbol of Nazi terror and crimes against the civilian population.
The mass extermination of people at Babi Yar marks one of the most tragic chapters of World War II. Remembering these crimes is our shared duty and serves as a reminder that any manifestation of neo-Nazism is unacceptable.
☝️ Starting this year, Russia observes April 19 as the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People Committed by the Nazis and Their Accomplices during the Great Patriotic War.
❗️ Russian diplomacy will continue to seek international recognition of the crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices against citizens of the Soviet Union, including the mass killings at Babi Yar, as acts of genocide against the Soviet people.
#WeRemember
🕯 September 29 marks the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the mass shooting of the Jewish population by the Nazis at the Babi Yar ravine on the outskirts of occupied Kiev.
On September 29–30, 1941, the Nazis and their collaborators rounded up Kiev’s Jews and forced them to Babi Yar. Many had no inkling until the very last moment that death awaited them. Others, realising what was happening, embraced, said their goodbyes, and prayed.
In the space of two days, 33,771 people were shot – predominantly women, children, and the elderly. People were driven into the ravine and gunned down with machine-gun fire. The sound of the shots was drowned out by music and the noise of a plane flying overhead.
💬 Mikhail Sidko, who was six years old at the time of the tragedy – one of the few survivors of Babi Yar – recalled:
Many lost their senses right there, realising what was about to happen to them. They screamed, were shot, and then dragged by their legs into the ravine.
Mass executions at Babi Yar continued right up until Kiev was liberated by the Red Army. In total, between 1941 and 1943, over 120,000 people of various ethnic backgrounds were killed there – Jews, Roma, Poles – as well as Soviet prisoners of war and camp inmates, clergy, underground resistance members, and others.
Sonderkommando 4a, part of Einsatzgruppe C, bore direct responsibility for the mass killings.
Ukrainian nationalists serving in the auxiliary police also took an active part in the atrocities.
As they retreated from Kiev, the Nazis attempted to destroy the evidence of their crimes by exhuming and burning tens of thousands of bodies. Nevertheless, they failed to conceal the scale of the atrocities committed. The few survivors of Babi Yar later testified at the Nuremberg Trials. Paul Blobel, who oversaw the exhumation and the destruction of evidence regarding the mass killings, was sentenced to death and hanged.
▪️ Babi Yar became one of the most notorious sites of the mass extermination of Jews during the Holocaust – a grim symbol of Nazi terror and crimes against the civilian population.
The mass extermination of people at Babi Yar marks one of the most tragic chapters of World War II. Remembering these crimes is our shared duty and serves as a reminder that any manifestation of neo-Nazism is unacceptable.
☝️ Starting this year, Russia observes April 19 as the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People Committed by the Nazis and Their Accomplices during the Great Patriotic War.
❗️ Russian diplomacy will continue to seek international recognition of the crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices against citizens of the Soviet Union, including the mass killings at Babi Yar, as acts of genocide against the Soviet people.
#WeRemember
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⚡️ Statement by the Foreign Ministers of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation on the 80th anniversary of the Verdict of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal (October 1, 2026)
October 1, 2026, marks 80 years since the delivery by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg of its Verdict.
We view the way the Nuremberg Trials were prepared and held as a unique experience and example of professional and effective cooperation within the international community. Countries with different systems of government, culture, traditions and historical destinies came together to put on trial and convict those who unleashed the most horrendous war in the history of humankind.
☝️ We call on the international community to respect and defend the principles set forth by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg to prevent wars, genocide, war crimes, torture and other crimes against humanity, and view the Verdict as an unbreakable and non-negotiable foundation of international law and world order. The Verdict has offered a legal framing for definitively defeating Nazism.
The Nuremberg Trials designated Nazi organisations, primarily the senior executives of the Nazi party – the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, as well as Gestapo and SS as criminal structures, and recognised their proactive involvement in developments that paved the way for a war of aggression and countless crimes against civilians.
The Trials laid the foundation for devising the post-war international legal tools for preventing wars, acts of genocide, torture and other crimes against humanity.
The Verdict of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal established that the Nazi war crimes were perpetrated at an unprecedented scale and were accompanied by unthinkable cruelty and terror.
▪️ Citizens of the Soviet Union suffered the most from civilian killings and atrocities. Based on solid evidence, the tribunal concluded that these crimes were perpetrated not only in an effort by occupation authorities to suppress resistance, but were also part of plan to expel and exterminate civilians for colonising the ceased territory.
In this connection, we emphasise that facts pertaining to expelling and exterminating civilians in the USSR by Nazis and their accomplices as established by the Verdict of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal must be viewed as an act of genocide against the Soviet Union.
***
We refuse to accept and firmly condemn any attempts to falsify history, including efforts to distort and revise the outcomes of the Second World War, and, in particular, facts pertaining to the Nazi crimes as set out by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal.
It is with great resolve that we reject any attempts to distort the historical truth and believe that the policy of denying these crimes, including genocide, welcoming or justifying criminal acts not only offends the memory of those who died in these atrocities or survived them, but also creates an illusion of impunity and fertile ground for these inhumane acts to be reproduced.
❗️ We call on the international community to respect and defend the legacy of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, as well as step up our efforts to share objective information about Nazi crimes for preventing the spread of neo-Nazi ideology, movements and organizations that could pose a threat to the peaceful coexistence of nations.
Read in full
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
October 1, 2026, marks 80 years since the delivery by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg of its Verdict.
We view the way the Nuremberg Trials were prepared and held as a unique experience and example of professional and effective cooperation within the international community. Countries with different systems of government, culture, traditions and historical destinies came together to put on trial and convict those who unleashed the most horrendous war in the history of humankind.
☝️ We call on the international community to respect and defend the principles set forth by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg to prevent wars, genocide, war crimes, torture and other crimes against humanity, and view the Verdict as an unbreakable and non-negotiable foundation of international law and world order. The Verdict has offered a legal framing for definitively defeating Nazism.
The Nuremberg Trials designated Nazi organisations, primarily the senior executives of the Nazi party – the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, as well as Gestapo and SS as criminal structures, and recognised their proactive involvement in developments that paved the way for a war of aggression and countless crimes against civilians.
The Trials laid the foundation for devising the post-war international legal tools for preventing wars, acts of genocide, torture and other crimes against humanity.
The Verdict of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal established that the Nazi war crimes were perpetrated at an unprecedented scale and were accompanied by unthinkable cruelty and terror.
▪️ Citizens of the Soviet Union suffered the most from civilian killings and atrocities. Based on solid evidence, the tribunal concluded that these crimes were perpetrated not only in an effort by occupation authorities to suppress resistance, but were also part of plan to expel and exterminate civilians for colonising the ceased territory.
In this connection, we emphasise that facts pertaining to expelling and exterminating civilians in the USSR by Nazis and their accomplices as established by the Verdict of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal must be viewed as an act of genocide against the Soviet Union.
***
We refuse to accept and firmly condemn any attempts to falsify history, including efforts to distort and revise the outcomes of the Second World War, and, in particular, facts pertaining to the Nazi crimes as set out by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal.
It is with great resolve that we reject any attempts to distort the historical truth and believe that the policy of denying these crimes, including genocide, welcoming or justifying criminal acts not only offends the memory of those who died in these atrocities or survived them, but also creates an illusion of impunity and fertile ground for these inhumane acts to be reproduced.
❗️ We call on the international community to respect and defend the legacy of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, as well as step up our efforts to share objective information about Nazi crimes for preventing the spread of neo-Nazi ideology, movements and organizations that could pose a threat to the peaceful coexistence of nations.
Read in full
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
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'The Sacred Beacon of Nuremberg and the Shadow of The Hague'
An article by Valery Zorkin, Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, marking the 80th Anniversary since the #NurembergTrials of Nazi war criminals
Article in full | Telegraph
✍️ 80 years ago, the International Military Tribunal in #Nuremberg delivered its verdict against 24 top-ranking leaders of Nazi Germany.
Most defendants were found guilty of the terrible crimes against peace and humanity, as well as war crimes. Twelve Nazi leaders — sentenced to death by hanging, while the others sentenced for life or lengthy terms of imprisonment.
It was the very unprecedented nature of Nazi ideology that made it necessary for taking equally unprecedented political and legal measures — the establishment of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials. <...>
❗️ It was the 'Judgment of Mankind' on Hitler's Nazism — the most dangerous manifestation of ideological, political and military barbarism.
A 'Sacred Beacon' in Nuremberg served as bearing the Promethean flame of international criminal justice. Yet, imperfect, with the retroactive application of law, it nevertheless shone, illuminating human path towards the ideals of universal justice.
<...>
The verdict of the Nuremberg Trials was based on an immense body of irrefutable evidence, firmly established and thoroughly examined. A vast archive of testimony was compiled. The voices of the victims were heard loud and clear — that was the enduring ethical significance of Nuremberg, which was both an act of justice and an act of remembrance. <...>
The Nuremberg Trials appeared before the world like Athena, born fully armed from the head of Zeus. The four Victorious Powers set about establishing a new legal order amid the ruins of defeated statehood and bringing the vanquished to justice.
The legitimacy of the Nuremberg proceedings and the binding force of its verdict was based on the collapse of the Nazi state, as well as on the Allied law established by the Instrument of Surrender.
The Tribunal's legitimacy, meanwhile, was rooted in natural law and universal moral values, above all, justice. It was founded on the conviction that certain crimes are so monstrous that they violate the very idea of humanity (delicta juris gentium), and that such crimes must be punished under all circumstances.
👉 That fundamental principle made it possible not only to cut through the Gordian knot of fascist evil and punish those responsible without departing from the bounds of the law, but also to establish a hierarchy of values in which law stands above force and crimes against humanity are subject to #NoStatuteOfLimitations. <...>
Nuremberg was an act of retribution and a defining moment in establishing the legal foundations of the post-war world. The Tribunal became a hammer brought down upon a criminal Nazi statehood and its legal system.
***
❗️ It was for the first time in history, categories of crimes were established that would become the 'alpha' and 'omega' of international criminal law.
Article 6 of the Charter of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal (IMT) defined three categories of crimes:
1. Crimes against Peace;
2. War Crimes;
3. Crimes against Humanity.
A war of aggression was declared the "supreme international crime".
The events in Nuremberg were perceived by the international community as the restoration of justice from the chaos of violence and arbitrariness. In the eyes of millions of victims and billions of people around the world, Nuremberg became a ritual of purification, one that united humanity. <...>
👉 Punishment was inescapable <...>. All this created a sense of the triumph of law and moral catharsis. The deeper meaning of Nuremberg can be traced to Plato's understanding of punishment — a criminal is held accountable not by the right of force, but by the force of law.
Read in full (Telegraph)
#Nuremberg80
An article by Valery Zorkin, Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, marking the 80th Anniversary since the #NurembergTrials of Nazi war criminals
Article in full | Telegraph
✍️ 80 years ago, the International Military Tribunal in #Nuremberg delivered its verdict against 24 top-ranking leaders of Nazi Germany.
Most defendants were found guilty of the terrible crimes against peace and humanity, as well as war crimes. Twelve Nazi leaders — sentenced to death by hanging, while the others sentenced for life or lengthy terms of imprisonment.
It was the very unprecedented nature of Nazi ideology that made it necessary for taking equally unprecedented political and legal measures — the establishment of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials. <...>
❗️ It was the 'Judgment of Mankind' on Hitler's Nazism — the most dangerous manifestation of ideological, political and military barbarism.
A 'Sacred Beacon' in Nuremberg served as bearing the Promethean flame of international criminal justice. Yet, imperfect, with the retroactive application of law, it nevertheless shone, illuminating human path towards the ideals of universal justice.
<...>
The verdict of the Nuremberg Trials was based on an immense body of irrefutable evidence, firmly established and thoroughly examined. A vast archive of testimony was compiled. The voices of the victims were heard loud and clear — that was the enduring ethical significance of Nuremberg, which was both an act of justice and an act of remembrance. <...>
The Nuremberg Trials appeared before the world like Athena, born fully armed from the head of Zeus. The four Victorious Powers set about establishing a new legal order amid the ruins of defeated statehood and bringing the vanquished to justice.
The legitimacy of the Nuremberg proceedings and the binding force of its verdict was based on the collapse of the Nazi state, as well as on the Allied law established by the Instrument of Surrender.
The Tribunal's legitimacy, meanwhile, was rooted in natural law and universal moral values, above all, justice. It was founded on the conviction that certain crimes are so monstrous that they violate the very idea of humanity (delicta juris gentium), and that such crimes must be punished under all circumstances.
👉 That fundamental principle made it possible not only to cut through the Gordian knot of fascist evil and punish those responsible without departing from the bounds of the law, but also to establish a hierarchy of values in which law stands above force and crimes against humanity are subject to #NoStatuteOfLimitations. <...>
Nuremberg was an act of retribution and a defining moment in establishing the legal foundations of the post-war world. The Tribunal became a hammer brought down upon a criminal Nazi statehood and its legal system.
***
❗️ It was for the first time in history, categories of crimes were established that would become the 'alpha' and 'omega' of international criminal law.
Article 6 of the Charter of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal (IMT) defined three categories of crimes:
1. Crimes against Peace;
2. War Crimes;
3. Crimes against Humanity.
A war of aggression was declared the "supreme international crime".
The events in Nuremberg were perceived by the international community as the restoration of justice from the chaos of violence and arbitrariness. In the eyes of millions of victims and billions of people around the world, Nuremberg became a ritual of purification, one that united humanity. <...>
👉 Punishment was inescapable <...>. All this created a sense of the triumph of law and moral catharsis. The deeper meaning of Nuremberg can be traced to Plato's understanding of punishment — a criminal is held accountable not by the right of force, but by the force of law.
Read in full (Telegraph)
#Nuremberg80
❤8⚡4👀1
Forwarded from Russian MFA 🇷🇺
#Victory81
🌟 On October 13, 1944, #Riga — the capital of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic — was liberated by from Nazi occupation.
Following a rapid advance towards the city and fierce combat on the outskirts of Riga, units of the Red Army’s 2nd and 3rd Baltic Fronts — commanded by Generals Andrey Yeremenko and Ivan Maslennikov, respectively, victoriously entered Riga.
🎖 A significant contribution to the defeat of the Nazi troops occupying Riga was made by Latvian national units within the Red Army — notably the soldiers of the 130th Latvian Rifle Corps. They fought bravely against the Nazi invaders, helped liberate our common Motherland and, through joint efforts, brought the Victory closer.
***
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
Riga remained under Nazi German occupation from July 1941. Over the three years of occupation, tens of thousands of civilians were killed by the Nazis, including effectively the entire Jewish population of Riga. The Nazi occupants plundered local resources and exploited the population to meet the needs of the Wehrmacht.
Located some 18 kilometres from Riga was the Nazi #Salaspils concentration camp — a sinister “death factory” where 12'000 children of various ages were killed. Thousands of them perished. The camp claimed the lives of more than 100'000 people, including children, civilians and prisoners of war, who died from starvation, medical experiments, gas chambers and disease.
#ArchivesSpeak
◼️ Learn more about Nazi crimes at Salaspils
◼️ Nazi atrocities in the occupied Latvian SSR
***
On 13 October, the people of Riga welcomed Soviet liberators.
📄 From a report submitted to the Head of the Political Directorate of the 3rd Baltic Front, dated October 13, 1944:
The liberation of Riga was one of the most difficult operations conducted by the Red Army in this sector of the front. The enemy fought fiercely for the city, turning it into a fortress. Riga — served as the administrative centre of the Nazi 'Reichskommissariat Ostland', one of the Third Reich’s key military and political hubs in Eastern Europe.
📄 From a report by the head of the Political Department of the 43rd Guards Latvian Rifle Division:
#WeRemember
Around 150'000 Soviet soldiers and officers lost their lives in the liberation of Latvia.
In memory of the Red Army soldiers, a monument to the Liberators of Riga from the German Fascist Invaders was opened in central Riga. This iconic memorial in the capital’s Victory Park became an enduring symbol of the triumph over Nazism in the Baltic region, as well as a tribute to the gratitude of the republic’s residents for the heroic sacrifice of Soviet soldiers.
❌ In the summer of 2022, the Latvian authorities ordered the demolition of the renowned monument, in what was a 👉 flagrant act of historical revisionism and state-sponsored vandalism. For decades, it had been a major memorial site for hundreds of thousands of compatriots and Latvians who cherished the historical truth.
The aim of this act of barbarism, driven by anti-Russian sentiment among Latvia’s political establishment, was to erase from the memory of generations the historical truth about the heroic feat of the Soviet soldiers-liberators, who, at the cost of immense sacrifice and effort, saved the peoples of the Baltic region from destruction and ruthless Germanisation under the Reich.
❗️ But #WeRemember and #LestWeForget
Following a rapid advance towards the city and fierce combat on the outskirts of Riga, units of the Red Army’s 2nd and 3rd Baltic Fronts — commanded by Generals Andrey Yeremenko and Ivan Maslennikov, respectively, victoriously entered Riga.
🎖 A significant contribution to the defeat of the Nazi troops occupying Riga was made by Latvian national units within the Red Army — notably the soldiers of the 130th Latvian Rifle Corps. They fought bravely against the Nazi invaders, helped liberate our common Motherland and, through joint efforts, brought the Victory closer.
***
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
Riga remained under Nazi German occupation from July 1941. Over the three years of occupation, tens of thousands of civilians were killed by the Nazis, including effectively the entire Jewish population of Riga. The Nazi occupants plundered local resources and exploited the population to meet the needs of the Wehrmacht.
Located some 18 kilometres from Riga was the Nazi #Salaspils concentration camp — a sinister “death factory” where 12'000 children of various ages were killed. Thousands of them perished. The camp claimed the lives of more than 100'000 people, including children, civilians and prisoners of war, who died from starvation, medical experiments, gas chambers and disease.
#ArchivesSpeak
◼️ Learn more about Nazi crimes at Salaspils
◼️ Nazi atrocities in the occupied Latvian SSR
***
On 13 October, the people of Riga welcomed Soviet liberators.
📄 From a report submitted to the Head of the Political Directorate of the 3rd Baltic Front, dated October 13, 1944:
The city’s population — workers, the urban poor, office employees and intellectuals — welcomed our forces with great joy and sincere affection.
The people of Riga greeted soldiers and officers with flowers, red flags and portraits of the leaders of our Party and Government.
The liberation of Riga was one of the most difficult operations conducted by the Red Army in this sector of the front. The enemy fought fiercely for the city, turning it into a fortress. Riga — served as the administrative centre of the Nazi 'Reichskommissariat Ostland', one of the Third Reich’s key military and political hubs in Eastern Europe.
📄 From a report by the head of the Political Department of the 43rd Guards Latvian Rifle Division:
The division fought its way from the borders of the Latvian SSR to Riga, yet nowhere had the local population welcomed us more warmly than in Riga itself…
The city’s residents greeted the soldiers and officers with flowers and red flags.
#WeRemember
Around 150'000 Soviet soldiers and officers lost their lives in the liberation of Latvia.
In memory of the Red Army soldiers, a monument to the Liberators of Riga from the German Fascist Invaders was opened in central Riga. This iconic memorial in the capital’s Victory Park became an enduring symbol of the triumph over Nazism in the Baltic region, as well as a tribute to the gratitude of the republic’s residents for the heroic sacrifice of Soviet soldiers.
❌ In the summer of 2022, the Latvian authorities ordered the demolition of the renowned monument, in what was a 👉 flagrant act of historical revisionism and state-sponsored vandalism. For decades, it had been a major memorial site for hundreds of thousands of compatriots and Latvians who cherished the historical truth.
The aim of this act of barbarism, driven by anti-Russian sentiment among Latvia’s political establishment, was to erase from the memory of generations the historical truth about the heroic feat of the Soviet soldiers-liberators, who, at the cost of immense sacrifice and effort, saved the peoples of the Baltic region from destruction and ruthless Germanisation under the Reich.
❗️ But #WeRemember and #LestWeForget
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