The remains of nearly fifty people found in a grave in Russia’s north-western Pskov region are likely the victims of mass executions dating back to World War Two, when Nazis occupied the area.
All of the 46 victims exhumed, 37 men and nine women, were shot in the head, the investigators say. The Investigative Committee (IC) has opened a criminal case on charges of genocide.
Сrimes based on an ideology of racial supremacy have no period of limitation, the IC’s spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said in an official statement.
She promised that the IC will continue to conduct investigations into the crimes committed by Nazis, and their collaborators, during the Second World War.
The grave was excavated at the site of a Nazi concentration camp near Moglino village.
Over 3,000 Soviet POWs and civilians belonging to various ethnic and religious groups were executed in Moglino and other locations in the Pskov region in 1941-44 by the camps’ Estonian guards, according to materials declassified by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) last November.
Last summer, Estonian authorities proposed restoring a monument to a Waffen-SS soldier, a move described by Russia as a provocation and an affront to the memory of those who died fighting the Nazis.
