بعث سعادة السفير ايلبروس كوتراشيف، سفير روسيا الاتحادية لدى جمهورية العراق، رسالة التهنئة إلى سماحة السيد عمار الحكيم بمناسبة انتخاب سماحته رئيسا لتيار الحكمة الوطني للدورة الجديدة

◼️ 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.

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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)

🎙 Video address by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the occasion of Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People committed by Nazis and their accomplices during 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War (Moscow, April 19, 2026)

💬 Friends,

This year will be the first time that we mark a mournful date, namely, Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People committed by Nazis and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. This new commemorative day - April 19 - was established in December 2025. Events in memory of the victims of Nazis and the immortal feat of the Soviet people will take place at Russian missions abroad as well.

April 19 was chosen for a reason. On that day in 1943, Decree No. 39 of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet “On measures of punishment for German Nazi perpetrators guilty of killings and torture of Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers, for spies, traitors to the Motherland from among Soviet citizens, and for their accomplices” was issued.

The decree became the first document to provide a legal qualification of the systematic policy pursued by the Nazis and collaborationists to exterminate the civilian population, and laid the groundwork for bringing them to justice. Among the first trials subsequently organised against German war criminals were the Krasnodar and Kharkov trials. Their outcomes significantly influenced the work of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal.

The evidence presented in the materials of the Nuremberg Tribunal and their legal assessments made it possible to speak of genocide of peoples in the territories occupied by Germany, primarily the territory of the USSR. The enemy was open about it waging a war of extermination against our Fatherland. As early as September 16, 1941, by order of the Chief of Staff of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, General Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, German troops were instructed to show no mercy to civilians. The atrocities reached an unprecedented scale.

▪️ The total number of civilian victims in the USSR during the occupation amounted to around 14 million people.

These crimes have no statute of limitations.

The outcomes of the Nuremberg Tribunal laid the foundation for drafting the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The very term “genocide” gained currency in 1944 to define a policy of obliteration of national, racial, and religious groups.

The facts of genocide in the occupied territories of the former USSR have been confirmed in court in all constituent entities of the Russian Federation where, during the Great Patriotic War, crimes against the civilian population were committed by German Nazis and their accomplices from among those in other countries who stood under Nazi banners. Russian diplomacy will seek recognition by the international community of the crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices against citizens of the Soviet Union as genocide of the Soviet people. The qualification to this end has been enshrined in a number of documents adopted within the CIS and the CSTO.

In Russia, rehabilitation of Nazism, including actions that desecrate the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Genocide, has been criminalised.

We will continue to resolutely defend historical truth and counter attempts to whitewash Nazi criminals and their acolytes, and to revise the internationally recognised outcomes of the Second World War. The majority of states stand in solidarity with us. There is clear broad support for Russian thematic initiatives, primarily at the UN, where Russian draft resolutions on combatting the glorification of Nazism are adopted annually.

Preserving the memory of millions of victims of the genocide of the Soviet people is our sacred duty.

We will not allow these atrocities to be consigned to oblivion, no matter how hard those who today seek once again to steer Europe down the well-trodden path of racial superiority may try.