State Duma workgroup to demand reparations of over €3 trln from Germany for WWII damage

Deputies of the State Duma, the lower house of Russian parliament are setting up a workgroup that will calculate the damage, which Germany inflicted on the Soviet Union during World War II, Izvestia daily said in an article published on Tuesday.

Upon the completion of computations, the workgroup plans to issue a demand to Germany for reparations.

The initiative was explained by the deputy Mikhail Degtyaryov, a member of the supreme council of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR). He said Germany had paid practically no reparations for the devastation and carnage during World War II.

The USSR took away some German assets furniture, clothes and manufacturing equipments under Yalta agreements from the Soviet sector of control. And although an agreement on cessation of reparations was signed with the German Democratic Republic, no such agreements were ever signed with the Federal Republic of Germany before or after reunification of the two Germanies.

Mikhail Degtyaryov believes this issue remains open and quite topical, all the more so that today's Germany continues inflicting damage on Russia as it presses forward with unlawful sanctions on the part of the EU.

• He believes that the final amount of reparations to paid off to Russia, which is the legal successor to the USSR, will stands between three and four trillion euro.

Russian experts say, however, that although claims against Germany are well-grounded, repayment of reparations is possible only upon an interstate agreement and it is practically unrealistic to recover any reparations seventy years after the end of the war.

• New Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras earlier spoke about a possibility of making reparation claims for the damage his country sustained during World War II but Germany made it clear it was not going to pay anything.

As for the efforts of the workgroup set up by the Duma deputies, the chairman of the committee on defence, Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov believes its activity is essential now.

He feels confident that the Russians must know how far back Germany pushed the USSR in terms of development during the war considering the irreparable loss of human resources.

The exact number of Soviet citizens who died during World War II is not known to date, although most historians and statisticians believe the figure stands between 25 million and 27 million people. One of the most illustrative examples in this case is the Siege of Leningrad that lasted almost 900 days and took away the lives of more than 650,000 residents of the city.
http://itar-tass.com/en/russia/775042
3/2/15
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