⚡️ Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation:

Following an application by the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, Baltic nationalists have been recognised by a court as accomplices of Nazi Germany in war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War – a finding of legal significance.

Recognition of this fact is not only an evident conclusion stemming from the principal legal findings of the Nuremberg Trials, but also a historical duty that society and the state owe to those who fought in the war, its veterans and its victims.

⚖️ It has been established that the Nazi invaders committed atrocities with the direct involvement of their accomplices – Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian nationalists (13 individuals and five organisations).

According to records from the archives of Russia’s Federal Security Service, Foreign Ministry and Defence Ministry, as well as the State Archive of the Russian Federation, following Germany’s attack on the USSR, the Nazis recruited Baltic nationalists from among local residents to do their “dirty work” in the occupied territories. They carried out punitive operations against civilians and Soviet POWs.

Through their actions, the territories of the Baltic countries – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – became killing grounds during the Great Patriotic War for POWs, Soviet officials and their families, and people suspected of sympathising with the Red Army.

▪️ In total, Baltic collaborators killed more than 1.5 million people during the war and the post-war years.

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Since the early 1990s, the authorities of today’s Baltic countries have pursued a deliberate state policy of distorting the USSR’s role in the Great Patriotic War and its Victory over Nazism. Collaborators associated with Nazi criminals, along with their organisations, are being glorified.

This contradicts the Verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal regarding responsibility for the Second World War, its causes and its outcomes, as well as the provisions of the UN General Assembly resolution “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”. In effect, it serves to justify Nazi crimes.

❗️ Countering these destructive trends is fundamental to preserving historical memory, preventing the falsification of history and protecting the national interests of the Russian Federation.