MOSCOW, July 26 (RAPSI) — The Krasnodar Krai Court has held that the crimes committed by the Nazi invaders during the Great Patriotic War on the territory of the region are to be recognized as genocide, the press service of the regional prosecutor's office has reported.

The court granted a move of the regional prosecutor on the recognition of already established and newly revealed crimes committed by the Nazi invaders during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 on the territory of the Krasnodar Krai occupied in the period from July 1942 to August 1943 as war crimes and crimes against humanity, genocide of the population and peoples of the Soviet Union. 

The respective petition was drafted and sent to the court as instructed by the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Igor Krasnov.

It has been established that in the period 1942-1943 on the territory of the Krasnodar Krai the German and occupation authorities and their accomplices, by shooting, torture, torture, hanging, gassing, burning alive and in other ways, as well as using an extensive network of concentration camps and labor service camps, deliberately massacred more than 48,000 civilians, including more than 9,000 children, as well as over 9,000 prisoners of war. More than 129,000 people were forcibly deported to be used as forced laborers in Germany and other countries.

By studying the available archival documents, it was also established that the sick and the disabled were subjected to systematic extermination, including through the use of "gas chambers". The stated facts are confirmed by the testimonies of numerous eyewitnesses about the extermination of Soviet civilians on the territory of the Krasnodar Krai, the materials of criminal cases and archival data. The killings of the civilians and prisoners of war have also been established and confirmed by courts.

The process was held with the personal participation of citizens who had been prisoners of concentration camps, with the involvement of specialists from the research staff of the Southern Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.