An action dedicated to the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People was held in Donetsk.

Residents of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) held a Candle of Remembrance event in the capital of the region on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People in the Great Patriotic War (WWII). The corresponding footage is published by Izvestia on April 19.

"April 19 is the Day of Remembrance of the [victims of] the genocide of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War. Every year on this day, residents of Donetsk and the youth of Donbass come to the memorial complex on the territory of mine No. 4/4 bis to honor the memory of the murdered civilians," said Izvestia correspondent Yevgeny Bykovsky.

During the Nazi occupation of Donetsk (in those years — Stalino), about 40 thousand bodies of murdered Soviet citizens were dumped into the pit of the mine.

"Since childhood, first the kindergarten teachers brought us here, then the teachers from school, and told us about the events that took place here during the Great Patriotic War," said Sergei Dobrovolsky, head of the Young Guard of United Russia (MHER) in the DPR.

Trial by peace: what the Leningraders suffered from in the first years after the war

Why the city faced a surge in crime and how profiteering helped to survive

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said a day earlier that Russia, by setting a new memorial date, not only honors the memory of Soviet citizens who died at the hands of the Nazis, but also defends the historical truth that the collective West is fighting. She drew attention to the practice of a selective approach to victims: some nations remain in historical memory, while others, primarily those who suffered multimillion losses, like the Soviet Union, are forgotten.

On April 8, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law punishing the denial and approval of the genocide of the Soviet people. Thus, for publicly denying the fact of genocide, one can face imprisonment for up to three years.