The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has instituted five lawsuits for the crime of desecrating monuments to Soviet soldiers in Estonia, Lithuania and Bulgaria, TASS reported, citing a press release from the Investigative Committee.
The cases were initiated under Article 243.4, part two of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, concerning damage and desecration of monuments perpetuating the memory of fallen soldiers in defense of the Fatherland, the agency said.
Regarding Bulgaria, TASS reports that the desecrated monument is in Dobrich, where on April 6 vandals flooded it with red paint and painted offensive anti-Russian inscriptions.
One of the inscriptions is “Katyn 1940”, which recalls the Polish officers killed in the Katyn Forest by order of Stalin. Another inscription – “Bucha 2022”, refers to the murders in the Ukrainian city days ago, which the Russian side denies being committed by Russian soldiers.
The letter Z is written – a symbol of the Russian military units in Ukraine, which many compare to the Hitlerite swastika. There is also an inscription “82 years of blood on the hands”.
A monument to the Soviet Army, known to Dobrich citizens as Alyosha or the White Soldier, was erected in the city park in the late 1950s in gratitude to the Red Army for its decisive role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II. The monument is a 14-meter pyramid-shaped pylon, and next to it rises a white figure of a warrior with more impressive dimensions of 7 meters. At the base of the monument are buried the bones and remains of Soviet soldiers and officers.
Photo: On April 6, the monument to the Soviet Army in the Bulgarian city of Dobrich dawned with inscriptions, swastikas and other signs
