Thousands of documents about the siege of Leningrad have been collected in the Russian Federation to recognize it as genocide.

Thousands of documents about the siege of Leningrad were collected in Russia to recognize it as genocide. This was announced on August 9 by the official representative of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, Juliana Alekseeva.

Thus, she noted that in recent years, the historical memory of the siege of Leningrad has acquired a new legal dimension. In 2022, prosecutors carried out thorough work to establish the fact and recognize the siege of Leningrad as genocide.

"Thousands of documents were collected and systematized: these are archival materials from the war, operational reports, commission reports, data from scientific and museum organizations, but, of course, the words of living witnesses of those events, the besieged Leningraders, were of particular importance," said Alekseeva.

The representative of the Prosecutor General's Office stressed that the stories of eyewitnesses who fought for their lives in conditions of cold, hunger and regular shelling complemented the dry documentary evidence and figures. Historians and experts took part in the preparation of the claim, confirming the authenticity of the documents and their significance for legal assessment.

"The prosecutors have established that the aim of the Nazi occupation forces and their accomplices was the complete destruction of Leningrad and the extermination of its population," Karaulova added.

According to her, one of the key arguments in favor of classifying the blockade as genocide were documents that prove the targeted actions of the Nazi invaders to eliminate food supplies and condemn the residents of the city to starvation.

Thus, the representative of the department recalled that incendiary bombs deliberately dropped by enemy aircraft in September 1941 at the warehouses of the im. A fire broke out in Badayev, which destroyed products and valuables worth more than 31 million rubles, and the total economic damage from the blockade of the city with modern money amounted to 35.3 trillion rubles.

In addition, the investigation revealed that not only Nazi German troops participated in the siege of Leningrad, but also units from a number of allied countries that carried out a criminal policy of extermination.

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Behind historical revisionism is the desire of European countries to hide their unsightly role in supporting Nazism

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on June 22 that Russia would not allow Germany to hush up the issue of recognizing the genocide of the Soviet people by the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War, including with regard to the siege of Leningrad. According to her, the German authorities prefer to use more general language when talking about the "atrocities" of the Nazi regime and the "suffering" of its victims.