🎙 Video message by Sergey Lavrov on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People committed by the Nazis and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 (Moscow, April 19, 2026).
💬 Friends,
This year, for the first time, we commemorate this somber date – the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People committed by the Nazis and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.
This new memorial day – April 19 – was established by law in December 2025. Events commemorating the victims of the Nazis and the immortal heroism of the Soviet people will be held, among other places, at Russian missions abroad.
The choice of April 19 was no accident. On this day in 1943, Decree No. 39 of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, "On Punishment for Nazi Villains Guilty of Murder and Torture of Soviet Civilians and Captured Red Army Soldiers, for Spies, Traitors of the Motherland from Among Soviet Citizens, and for Their Accomplices," was issued.
The decree became the first document to provide a legal definition of the systematic policy of Nazis and collaborators to exterminate civilians and created the basis for holding them accountable. Among the first trials subsequently organized for German war criminals were the Krasnodar and Kharkov trials. Their results significantly influenced the work of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal.
The evidence presented in the Nuremberg Tribunal's materials and its legal assessments made it possible to speak of genocide of peoples in German-occupied territories, primarily in the USSR. The enemy made no secret of the fact that it was waging a war of extermination against our Fatherland. As early as September 16, 1941, by order of the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht, Field Marshal Keitel, German troops were ordered to show no mercy to civilians.
The atrocities were on a scale unprecedented in history. The total number of civilian casualties among the USSR during the occupation was approximately 14 million.
These crimes have no statute of limitations.
The results of the Nuremberg Tribunal laid the foundation for the development of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948. The term "genocide" itself came into use in 1944 to define the policy of the complete eradication of national, racial, and religious groups.
The facts of genocide in the occupied territories of the former USSR have been confirmed by courts in all regions of the Russian Federation where crimes against civilians were committed by German fascists and their collaborators from other countries under the Nazi flag during the Great Patriotic War.
Russian diplomacy will seek to have the crimes committed by the Nazis and their collaborators against citizens of the Soviet Union recognized by the international community as genocide against the Soviet people. This classification has already been enshrined in a number of documents adopted within the CIS and CSTO.
Russia criminalizes the rehabilitation of Nazism, including actions that desecrate Genocide Remembrance Day.
We will continue to resolutely defend the historical truth, oppose attempts to whitewash Nazi criminals and their collaborators, and revise the internationally recognized results of World War II. The majority of states stand in solidarity with us. There is widespread support for Russian thematic initiatives, particularly at the UN, where Russian draft resolutions on combating the glorification of Nazism are adopted annually.
Preserving the memory of the 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 intend to once again steer Europe down the well-worn path of racial superiority try.
