[Regnum] A mass grave of residents killed by the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War in the former Mginsky District of the Leningrad Region has been discovered. Boris Kovalev, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, and Leading Researcher at the Saint Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, reported this on April 17.
"Yes, indeed, remains were found. But they weren't just children. A document was also found confirming that there was a mass murder in the Mginsky District. If we were to accurately convey the document's contents, it would be the burning of a large, peaceful family, including women, children, and elderly people. Of course, there were no men, since they were, of course, away at the war, at the front," Kovalev told TASS.
In total, searchers found the remains of several murdered children aged from 5-6 to 12-13 years old, as well as young women.
Additionally, a report titled "On the state of the Mginsky District of the Leningrad Region, partially liberated from the German occupiers," was found. It stated that the Nazis had committed savage reprisals against civilians in the area. According to the document, the Germans forcibly removed a group of residents with young children from the "Krasny Oktyabr" state farm in the Shumsky village council, locked them in a wooden house, and set it on fire. Sixteen people died in the fire.
"We haven't found everything. We've lost many such places of memory now. <…> One of the hallmarks of genocide is the mass burning of our villages. Now it's a forest, a ravine, an open field. We can't find this place of death, even with maps from that time," Kovalev explained.
Searchers continue to recover remains from the mass grave and examine archives to learn details of Nazi crimes.
In February 2025, Andrei Yakovenko, chief consultant for the Information and Document Management Department of the LPR Archive Service, reported that remains of victims of the Nazi occupation were still being discovered in Luhansk. Voroshilovgrad (now Luhansk) was under German occupation for 212 days. It was captured by the Nazis on July 17, 1942, and liberated by the Red Army on February 14, 1943.