MOSCOW, May 5 (RAPSI) - On May 14, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow will consider a lawsuit to overturn the Ministry of Justice’s refusal to draft a bill on liability for distorting the facts of World War II, the court says on its website.

A few months back, attorneys Marat Amanliyev and Nikolai Maksimov told RAPSI that they addressed the Ministry of Justice directly with an initiative to amend the Code of Administrative Offenses to introduce legal liability for issuing “public statements that downgrade the Soviet Union’s role in World War II, for distorting and denying the Soviet Union’s achievements in the war as well as calling for any revision of the outcome of the war and the Soviet Union’s role in it.”

According to the initiative’s authors, offensive statements are intended to downgrade the great contribution of the Soviet Union in the victory over Nazism in the WWII. There have been regular attempts to revise the events of the war.

The various Soviet victories over Nazi Germany changed the course of the war. However, some public figures and politicians shamelessly and intentionally try to distort events. Russian law does not currently contain a direct ban on such statements or any liability for them.

Amanliyev says that the Ministry of Justice rejected the proposal.

The lawyers have appealed to the court to overrule the ministry’s refusal and compel it to draft a bill. The proposed penalty would be 40 to 120 hours of community service.