Russian prosecutor asks court to recognise Nazi WW2 crimes in Moscow region as genocide

Russian prosecutors have asked a court to recognise crimes committed by Nazi Germany in Moscow region during World War Two as genocide against the peoples of the Soviet Union, they said in a statement on Thursday.

The move appeared part of a wider effort by Russia to portray its war in Ukraine as an existential struggle like that fought by the Soviet Union, which lost some 27 million people in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.