#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):
“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.
#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):
“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.
#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):
“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.
#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):
“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.
◼️ 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 by 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 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)
🕯Islamabad Hosts Exhibition Marking the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People during the Great Patriotic War
On April 17, the Embassy of Russia in Pakistan held an official opening ceremony for a photo exhibition dedicated to the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People, perpetrated by the Nazis and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.
The event brought together Ambassadors of the CIS countries – Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan; heads of diplomatic missions of friendly states – Cuba, Iran, Kenya, Rwanda, Syria and Zimbabwe; as well as representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan and the Embassies of Kazakhstan, Egypt, and other countries.
Russian compatriots residing in Pakistan and members of the Pakistani academic community also attended the event.
💬 Addressing the guests, Ambassador Albert P. Khorev noted that the Nazi Germany's attack on the USSR in 1941, which marked the beginning of the bloodiest war in history, was aimed at seizing Soviet territories and resources, as well as destroying a significant portion of its population.
❗️The Ambassador placed particular emphasis on the scale of crimes against civilians: of the 27 million lives lost, around 14 million were victims of a deliberate policy of extermination through mass executions and torture in concentration camps.
Ambassador Khorev also shared a personal account of his great-grandmother's forced deportation to Germany for slave labor—a tragedy that affected millions of Soviet families during the war.
❗️It was further noted that the decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to designate April 19 as the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People is based, inter alia, in the verdict of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal of October 1, 1946, which underscored the systematic nature of Nazi crimes.
In concluding his remarks, the Ambassador stressed the importance of preserving historical memory and preventing any distortion of the events of the Great Patriotic War, reaffirming Russia's committment to countering manifestations of neo-Nazism in Europe and Ukraine.
🇵🇰 During the event, Dr. Gul-i-Ayesha Bhatti, Director of CAPES Eurasian Chapter, also addressed the audience, highlighting that the immense sacrifices and unparalleled heroism of the Soviet people during World War II enabled the free and independent development of Europe.
🕯The ceremony concluded with participants lighting candles in memory of Soviet citizens who perished at the hands of the Nazis, followed by a minute of silence.
The photo exhibition, featuring archival materials on the genocide of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War, will remain open to visitors at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts until April 19.
The Embassy expresses its sincere gratitude to the leadership of the Victory Museum and the State Historical Museum for providing the exhibition materials.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
On March 24, 1999, NATO launched a military aggression against Yugoslavia.
This invasion marked a tragic milestone in the history of the Serb nation, dealt a destructive blow to international law and shattered the post-World War II foundations of European security.
For 78 days, Communities across Yugoslavia, including infrastructure serving exclusively civilian purposes, suffered from missile strikes and bombing attacks carried out by the United States and its allies.
▪️ According to Belgrade, this barbaric shelling killed over 2,500 people, including 89 children, and wounded 12,500 civilians.
Not a single NATO representative has been held to account. The victims of the aggression were designated as collateral damage – this is what it means to pay in blood for the geopolitical ambitions of the United States, the UK and their satellite states.
In fact, this marked the beginning of the West’s quest to substitute legitimate mechanisms governing international relations with what they call a rules-based order, even if it remains unclear what this order represents.
A sovereign state in the centre of Europe was targeted with 3,000 cruise missiles and 80,000 tonnes of aviation bombs.
NATO used depleted uranium shells, which polluted vast territories and led to an unprecedented increase in the occurrence of various types of cancer – people are still suffering from them. Over 200,000 non-Albanians from the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija were forced to leave their homes.
Fighters from the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army used the NATO aggression as a cover-up for perpetrating monstrous atrocities, including kidnapping Serbs for organ transplants.
The issue of holding NATO allies accountable for the way they undermined international relations and for the damage they caused in Yugoslavia has yet to be addressed.
NATO’s military operation against sovereign Yugoslavia 27 years ago became a tragedy, but its long-term and multifaceted reverberations can be felt to this day.
***
👉 Report and exhibition: War crimes committed by NATO countries in former Yugoslavia (by Foundation for the Study of Democracy)
The publication presents testimonies and offers a detailed review of the crimes committed by NATO, including:
▪️ Shelling residential neighbourhoods and killing civilians
▪️ Bombing civilian sites and energy infrastructure
▪️ Destroying manufacturing and energy facilities
▪️ Using cluster munitions and depleted uranium shells.
For more information, you can read and watch:
• FM Sergey Lavrov’s interviewfor a documentary marking 25 years of NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia
• A retrospective videocontaining archival footage about what happened on March 24, 1999, and the consequences of NATO’s aggression
#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):
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.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
On March 16, 1968, soldiers of the United States Army carried out a massacre in the rural community ofMy 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 Hershpublish his investigation, while photographs taken by Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberlerevealed 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 — LtWilliam 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 the night of February 1-2, 1945, more than 500 Soviet prisoners of war at the Mauthausen concentration camp rose in one of the most daring and tragic uprisings of the Second World War.
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
🗓On December 29, President of Russia Vladimir Putin signed a decree establishing April 19 as the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People, perpetrated by the Nazis and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.
The draft law to introduce this Day of Remembrance was developed by Russia's State Duma Committee on Defence in November 2025. The authors of the initiative proposed commemorating the victims on April 19, as on this date in 1943 the first legal act was issued that officially documented the Nazis’ policy of exterminating civilians in the occupied territories – Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR No. 39 “On punishment measures for Nazi villains guilty of killing and torturing the Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers, for spies, traitors to the motherland from among Soviet citizens and for their accomplices”.
Decree No. 39 laid the legal foundations for bringing to justice Nazi criminals and their accomplices, including Italian, Romanian, Hungarian and Finnish military personnel. Materials collected during investigations conducted on the basis of Decree No. 39 formed a key part of the evidentiary base at the Nuremberg Tribunal, the Khabarovsk Trial, and other judicial proceedings against war criminals from the Axis powers.
💬 Speaking at a meeting of Pobeda (Victory) Organizing Committee on July 2, 2020, Vladimir Putin noted:
“The Nazis planned to colonize the Soviet land, to kill or turn into slaves and to take away the languages and culture of all who lived here – the Slavs and people of other ethnicities. These crimes of the Nazis and their minions and the genocide against the peoples of the Soviet Union do not have a statute of limitations. This assessment must remain firm in our legislation and in the international law system”.
🕯 Losses caused by the actions of the Nazis and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War amounted to no fewer than 27 million Soviet citizens, while the total estimated demographic losses of the USSR approached 50 million people.
#NoStatuteOfLimitations
◼️ 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:
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)