East Karelia | Russian prosecutors want the court to recognize the “genocide committed by Finns” in Eastern Karelia

The Russians prosecutors announced on Thursday that they have asked the court to recognize the genocide committed by Finns in Eastern Karelia during the Continuation War.

The application was sent to the court by the Prosecutor General’s Office of Karelia, Russia Igor Krasnov assignment, it is said in the bulletin.

According to the Attorney General’s office, archival documents and witness statements show that more than 8,000 civilians and 18,000 Soviet prisoners of war were killed in more than a hundred prison camps built under the Finnish occupation in East Karelia between 1941 and 1944.

“During the occupation of Finland, more than 7,000 prisoners died in the Petroskoi concentration camps alone,” states the Attorney General’s press release.

The Finns are also accused of destroying cities, villages, industry and farms for 20 trillion rubles in today’s money, or about 215 billion euros.

According to the prosecutors, the crimes that led to the genocide were committed not only by the Finnish forces, but also by the ally Nazi Germany. Prosecutors talk about “fascist occupiers”.

Historian Antti Laine does not see anything new in the presentation of the Russian prosecutors.

“I almost cry when the formula is always the same,” says Laine, who retired from the University of Eastern Finland.

He sees the emergence of the issue as part of Russia’s desire to emphasize the “Great Patriotic War”, which the country refers to as World War II. For example, Russia has justified the war of aggression in Ukraine with the fact that a Nazi regime oppressing Russian-speakers is in power in the country.

Laine points out that the camps are a fact where Soviet citizens died in large numbers. Residents of the area who were not Finnish by birth were locked up in them. The conditions in the camps were inhumane, and many people died from, among other things, hunger, cold and diseases, but also from shootings.

Especially in the hunger winter of 1941–42, the death rate was high, and the failure to maintain the camps is one of the shameful points in Finnish history.

“Yes, the Finns were racists, but not fascists,” says Laine.

He also does not believe that recognizing the “genocide” would affect the already ice-cold relations between Finland and Russia.

Camps have not been a secret, but were already discussed in the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947. They were also taken into account when calculating war reparations, and the Soviet Union did not make any demands on the matter after that. In addition, extensive research has been conducted on the matter, which has been supported by the state.

The atrocities allegedly committed by the Finnish occupiers in Karelia rose in Russia to the general public in 2019, when the security service FSB released Russian documents about the events.

In 2020 Russia’s highest criminal investigation authority, the Federal Investigation Committee, announced that it has started a criminal investigation into the genocide committed by Finnish forces in Eastern Karelia. So far, however, it is not clear whether the new demand by Russian prosecutors is related to this investigation.

Finland occupied the capital of Karelia, Petroskoi, in October 1941 from the Soviet Union. The name of the city was changed to Äänislinna.

On Friday, it will be 80 years since the Soviet Union recaptured Petrozavodsk on June 28, 1944.