USSR's direct, indirect casualties from WWII total 50 mln - Russia's ex-Deputy Prosecutor General Zvyagintsev
MOSCOW. Nov 19 (Interfax) - The Soviet Union has lost around 50 million people, directly and indirectly, as a result of the Second World War, according to Alexander Zvyagintsev, currently Vice President of the International Association of Prosecutors (IAP) and a Russian deputy prosecutor general in the recent past.
"The Soviet Union's total losses stand at nearly 50 million people. These are the direct and indirect casualties of our country from the Great Patriotic War, both the fallen and those who died from injuries later," he said at a Moscow conference on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.
Those figures include so-called demographic losses - the unborn children of those killed, he said.
"These losses are comparable to populations of a whole host of European countries, from Scandinavia to the Baltics. This is the price our people paid for the victory over fascism," Zvyagintsev said.
This is why "the lessons of the Nuremberg trials must never be forgotten, otherwise we face the notion called 'a stolen victory'," he said. A case in point is a recent social poll in Europe which found only 12% of respondents naming the USSR as victor over fascism in Europe, the IAP vice president said.
"That's what a stolen victory is," said Zvyagintsev, the author of numerous books and films on trial of the century over the Nazi.