Russia Justifies War... Holding 'Nuremberg-Style' War Crimes Trial

Nuremberg Trials Held to Punish German Nazi War Criminals After WWII
Supporting Putin's Justification for 'Denazification of Ukraine'

The scene of Mariupol city center, a southern Ukrainian port city under concentrated attack by Russia. Photo by TASS, Yonhap News Agency

[Asia Economy Intern Reporter Kim Se-eun] To justify the invasion of Ukraine, Russia plans to hold a war crimes trial modeled after the "Nuremberg Military Tribunal" targeting Ukrainian military prisoners of war.

On the 28th (local time), the British daily The Guardian reported that shortly after the outbreak of the Ukraine war, a former Russian diplomat posted on WhatsApp, "Prepare for Nuremberg 2.0."

The Nuremberg Military Tribunal was a trial held in Nuremberg, Germany, from 1945 to 1948, immediately after World War II, to punish Nazi German war criminals for their war crimes.

The head of the Crimean Peninsula, annexed by Russia, also claimed that "the eastern region of Ukraine occupied by Russia will serve as a lesson to all who have forgotten the lessons of Nuremberg."

Francine Hirsch, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States and author of a book on the Nuremberg war crimes trials, analyzed, "This trial will be a political trial supporting the justification of 'denazification.'"

Earlier, President Putin pointed to Ukraine's Azov Battalion as the justification for the invasion of Ukraine, advocating "denazification." Russia claims that the Azov Battalion follows Nazism and has committed mass killings and torture of pro-Russian residents in the Donbas region.

Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), established by pro-Russian separatist forces and recognized by Putin as independent from Ukraine, also said, "We are preparing to establish a military tribunal on the territory of the republic," adding, "The 1943 Kharkiv trial will serve as a model."

The former Soviet army sentenced three Germans and one Ukrainian to death by hanging through the Kharkiv trial. The execution scene was even published in an American magazine at the time.

Western experts expressed concern that a "political trial" against Ukrainian military prisoners of war will actually take place, which could simultaneously dilute the allegations of war crimes against Russia.