MOSCOW, February 14 - RAPSI, Diana Gutsul. The Tverskoy Dictrict Court of Moscow has dismissed Yevegeny Dzhugashvili's defamation lawsuit to refute statements made about his grandfather Joseph Stalin's involvement in the execution of Polish officers.

Over 20,000 Polish officers and civilians who had been imprisoned in the 1939 partitioning of Poland by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were executed in Katyn near the Russian city of Smolensk in 1940.

Deputies of the parliament's lower house were the defendants in the case.

The plaintiff specified his claims and asked the court to declare as false the statement that Stalin directly ordered the Katyn executions.

Dzhugashvili intends to contest the dismissal.

Dzhugashvili earlier filed a lawsuit seeking 100 million rubles ($3.2 million) in damages from the Duma deputies, but the court dismissed the case considering the claims unfounded.

This time, Dzhugashvili only demands a refutation.

The Soviet Union always blamed the Katyn massacre on the Nazis, saying the killings took place in 1941, when the territory was in German hands. However, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev formally admitted in 1990 that the executions were carried out by the NKVD around 1940.

In the 1990s, Russia handed over to Poland copies of documents from top-secret File No. 1, which placed the blame squarely on the Soviet Union. In November 2010, the lower house of parliament approved a declaration recognizing the Katyn massacre as a crime committed by the Stalin regime.