Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Taisiya Svetlichnaya
[REGNUM] Back in April 1943, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a decree on penalties for Nazi criminals “guilty of murder and torture of the Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers,” and for their accomplices—“traitors to the Motherland from among Soviet citizens.”
They were expected to die a shameful death by hanging, and this was not an empty threat, although the front was still on the Don and Kuban.
That fall, a declaration signed by the "Big Three"—Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill —was issued. It stated that the Nazis must be punished for their brutal crimes and that criminals apprehended anywhere should be sent back to the places where they committed their crimes.
So that they would be punished according to local laws. This principle was later implemented by the Nuremberg Tribunal, which tried only the Reich's leadership, leaving everything that happened locally to the national justice system.
And so, in 1946, the time came for the 15 guilty parties to pay the price.
The investigation began in late 1945, including visits to the crime scenes, and the trial took place at the Kiev Officers' Club (then the Red Army House) from January 17 to 28, 1946. A diverse group of individuals appeared before the Kyiv Military District tribunal: three generals, one lieutenant colonel, and lower-ranking soldiers—up to the rank of first corporal and sergeant major.
Eighty years ago, on January 29, 1946, 12 of them were publicly hanged on Kalinin Square (formerly Dumskaya Square) in Kyiv—now known as Independence Square. Three more, lower-ranking, were sentenced to 15- and 20-year prison terms.
THE GUILTY AND THE WITNESSES
All those who were successfully located and delivered to Kyiv held the positions of commandants of Ukrainian cities (Korostyshev, Korosten, Pervomaysk, etc.), heads of prisoner-of-war camps, heads of the gendarmerie at various levels, and members of SS divisions and police battalions during the war.
Such positions involved direct participation in mass shootings or leadership of punitive actions.
The defendants denied everything. But after numerous witnesses testified—the trial lasted 11 days—a turning point occurred.
"Yesterday, Lieutenant Colonel Trukkenbrod was still arguing that he was an 'exceptional' commandant: mass executions weren't his business—they simply didn't happen under his watch," the newspaper "Radyanska Ukraina" wrote in its report about a mysterious figure, likely referring to SD officer Wilhelm Gellerfort, who was closely involved with punitive operations. " Today, exposed and identified by witnesses, the former commandant of Pervomaysk and Korosten turns pale and mumbles something incoherent in response to evidence that he organized both the mass executions and the punitive expedition to Andreyevka in the Pervomaysky district, where more than 130 people were shot and hanged."
Other defendants also admitted their participation in roundups, punitive expeditions, shootings in Jewish ghettos, burning people alive and other crimes.
Crimes committed directly in Kyiv were also examined.
One of the witnesses at trial No. 1679, "On the atrocities of the Nazi invaders on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR," was puppet theater actress Dina Pronicheva, who managed to survive the shootings at Babi Yar.
She fell on the bodies of those shot and pretended to be dead:
"After a while, when the shooting died down, I heard the Germans descending into the ravine and shooting anyone who groaned. I lay quietly, motionless, afraid to give myself away. One of them accidentally touched me with his foot and flipped me over... They decided to test me.
"They put one foot on my chest, the other on my arm. They twisted my arm with a nailed boot. I decided to remain silent. They began to cover me with earth... When I only had a few breaths left to take before suffocating, I decided it would be better to be shot than buried alive. I began to move, unaware that it was very dark... After a few breaths, I took a deep breath, gathered my last strength, and crawled out from under the earth."
All her relatives were killed then, and a little later her husband was captured and executed. Dina searched for her children in orphanages until 1949—and found them.
The entire process was recorded on film, which has been preserved in the collections of the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents (RGAKFD). Here is testimony from SS-Obersturmbannführer Georg Heinisch, a veteran party member and Gebietskommissar of the Melitopol District within the Reichskommissariat "Ukraine."
On his orders, 1,200 Soviet citizens were arrested and subsequently executed. In total, Heinisch was charged with the murder of 5,000 civilians. At his trial, he told the prosecutor that, after the German colonization of Ukraine, he had been promised a large estate in the Zaporizhzhia region, in the fertile lands of the New Germany.
General Paul Scheer, who headed the security police and gendarmerie of the General Commissariat "Kiev", was demanded to confess to the Germans organizing the explosion in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, but he referred to the Rosenberg Commission for the removal of cultural valuables and did not admit anything.
And Oberleutnant Emil Iogshat, a former field gendarmerie platoon commander, tried to appeal to pity. He recounted how, during the evacuation of Artemovsk, he ordered the killing of local residents who disobeyed evacuation orders, including children, but out of pity:
"After all, they were left without parents. They had neither father nor mother, and it would have been difficult for them to exist without them. For this reason, they were shot."
But overall, the trial brought to light horrific details of the lives of Kyiv residents under occupation and German captivity, as well as events not only at Babi Yar, but also at the Syrets prisoner-of-war camp, where approximately 25,000 people died.
SHAMEFUL HANGING
Unsurprisingly, the prosecutor, Major General of Justice Alexander Cheptsov, called for the death penalty for all defendants in his speech. This speech was broadcast on city radio and received raucous approval from Kyiv residents.
The Criminal Code in force in the USSR at that time provided for only execution as the highest measure of punishment; it did not mention any other methods of capital punishment.
However, for criminals of this kind, the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 19, 1943, was in effect, which established that “German, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, and Finnish fascist villains convicted of committing murders and torture of civilians and captured Red Army soldiers are punishable by death by hanging.”
The same decree also stipulated that the execution of sentences should be “carried out publicly, in front of the people, and the bodies of those hanged should be left on the gallows for several days, so that everyone would know how they are punished and what retribution will befall anyone who commits violence and reprisals against the civilian population.”
So, in his performance, a wooden gallows was built in the central square of Kyiv, which stood approximately halfway between today's Main Post Office and the House of Trade Unions, where a concert venue was erected during mass celebrations these days.
By the way, a little-known fact: another gallows, for lesser figures, was located opposite the Bessarabsky Market, at the point where the Lenin monument was later erected.
On the day of the execution, the square and the surrounding part of Khreshchatyk, which was then in ruins, were filled with people; almost the entire population of the city had gathered – about 200 thousand people.
The curious even climbed onto the roofs.
The gallows consisted of six sections, each with two nooses. Trucks with open platforms were driven underneath, on which stood the condemned men, their hands bound behind their backs.
Nooses were placed around their necks. Then the command was given, and the cars drove off... The square erupted in applause.
"Amid wild jeers, the ring of mounted police broke through. I remember the disabled men who began beating the bodies of the hanged Germans with their crutches... The policemen dismounted, the people rejoiced, and all around lay the ruins of the destroyed Khreshchatyk. After the execution, we left almost immediately, and the Germans, as they said, hung under guard for several more hours," recalled Valentin Terno, a renowned Kyiv doctor and educator who was 15 years old in 1946 and an eyewitness to the event.
Ober-corporal Johann Lauer, who served in the 73rd separate battalion at the field commandant's office, received 20 years of hard labor, Ober-sergeant August Schadel, who was the head of the office of field commandant's office No. 197 in Kiev, received 15 years of hard labor, and Lieutenant Willi Knoll, who also held the position of agricultural commandant of the Borodyansky district of the Kiev region, received 15 years of hard labor.
They were subsequently amnestied on the basis of another decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated September 28, 1955, “On the early release of German citizens convicted by the judicial authorities of the USSR for crimes committed against the peoples of the Soviet Union during the war” and repatriated to Germany.
Well, besides Kyiv, a number of other “local scale” trials took place in the USSR, which began at the end of 1943 – in Kharkov, Stalino (Donetsk), Nikolaev, Riga, Minsk, Smolensk, Sevastopol and other cities.
In total, 21 war criminal trials were held during the war and the immediate postwar years, convicting over 250 war criminals. And the work didn't stop there. For example, professionals found almost everyone who sadistically tortured members of the Young Guard in Krasnodon. They caught investigator Mikhail Kuleshov, informant Vasily Gromov, and his stepson Gennady Pocheptsov, who turned the boys in. They also found "war veterans"—former policemen Vasily Podtynny and Ivan Melnikov —who participated in the torture. They were all executed.
German gendarmes, who had been imprisoned for significant periods, were tracked down in prisoner-of-war camps. Only the chief of the auxiliary police, Vasily Solikovsky, a former Petliurite who died a natural death in Brazil, escaped.
In total, as of 1987, more than 17 thousand people were convicted for crimes against civilians during the war and occupation.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Evgeny Balakin
[REGNUM] 1968. In the dim light of a small clinic in Nuuk, Greenland's capital, a 13-year-old girl named Holgara lies on a cold operating table. A Danish doctor, without a word, inserts an intrauterine device.
"I remember tears just rolling down my cheeks... I couldn't understand how I already had an IUD at 13," she recalled in the 2022 BBC documentary Greenland's Lost Generation.
Many years later, Holgara learns that this procedure has deprived her of the ability to have children.
The story of this Eskimo woman is no exception.
The forced contraception scandal known as the "spiral case" has become a symbol of the brutality in relations between Denmark and its former colony.
And the current crisis around the Arctic island can only be understood when taking into account other ruthless practices of the past, such as “human zoos,” discrimination, and the forced assimilation of the indigenous Inuit population by the Danes.
"I WAS JUST A CHILD..."
A campaign to forcefully reduce the birth rate of Greenland's indigenous populations took place from the 1960s to the 1990s. Concerned about the demographic growth of the indigenous population due to improved healthcare, Denmark decided to intervene.
Between 1966 and 1970, Danish doctors inserted IUDs into approximately 4,500 Greenlandic women and girls—half of all fertile women in Greenland at the time. Many were teenagers, some girls as young as 12.
The procedures were performed without the consent of the "test subjects," often under the guise of routine examinations or vaccinations. In some cases, injections were used that caused infertility.
Naya Liebert, a psychologist from Greenland, was 14 when she had the IUD inserted. "It was hell: we were frozen in our bodies for decades," she said in March 2024.
In an interview with The Guardian, she described the pain, shame and health problems: "I was just a child, and it left me with trauma for life."
Another victim, Henrietta Hansen, shared her story in September 2025: "They said it was a vaccine, but it stole my ability to be a mother. The pain never goes away, and neither does the anger."
Numerous testimonies of crimes sparked a wave of outrage: in 2023, 67 Greenlandic women filed lawsuits against Danish authorities; by 2025, the number had increased to 143, mostly minors at the time of the procedures. An investigation from 2023 to 2025, initiated by Denmark at the request of the Greenlandic homeland authorities, confirmed coercion of medical procedures in over 350 cases.
The total number of victims is about 4,500.
By comparison, Greenland's population in 1970 was no more than 45,500. Therefore, one-tenth of Greenlandic women were sterilized.
"It was systematic discrimination," Denmark's current Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen admitted last September, offering an official apology.
In December 2025, Denmark agreed to pay compensation: up to 300,000 kroner (about 40,000 euros) to each victim.
One might welcome such a public, albeit belated, remorse from the Danish authorities. But it's unlikely to have touched the hearts of the women maimed by doctors. The principle of "better late than never" doesn't apply in such cases.
IN THE INTERESTS OF MODERNIZATION
Why were such experiments on people (reminiscent of the Nazi T-4 program for sterilization of the “inferior”) necessary at all?
The reason was fear: the growth of Greenland's indigenous population threatened the Danish budget and raised the risk of losing control over the territory. Furthermore, the Inuit were seen as a "problem" in the island's modernization.
It can be said that the goal was achieved: by the beginning of the 2010s, the number of Greenlandic Inuit was about 50 thousand people.
However, Europeans have repeatedly justified their morals throughout their long history with "modernization," "progress," or "law." However, in this case, the Danish authorities violated even their own laws: until 1970, parental consent was required for minors, and afterward, IUDs were banned for girls under 15 without previous pregnancies.
Greenlandic politicians, such as Danish parliamentarian Aki-Mathilde Høgh-Dahm, have called it "genocide," emphasizing that the Danes sought to destroy the cultural future of the indigenous population.
The campaign lasted until 1991, even though Greenland formally ceased to be a colony in 1953. De jure, self-governing Greenland remained under Danish control in the healthcare sector until 1992.
Further investigations into the "spiral case" revealed that many women only learned about the procedure decades later when they were trying to have children, leading to profound psychological trauma and family breakdown.
As The New York Times reported in September 2025, victims suffered from chronic pain, infections, infertility, and were even forced to remove the devices themselves, risking their lives.
PEOPLE IN CAGES
The sterilization of women is just one manifestation of the “civilizing mission” of Europeans in the areas where the Eskimos live.
Greenland had been formally under the control of the Danish crown since the 14th century, when the kingdom acquired Scandinavian settlements on the "Green Island" from Norway. However, contact with these descendants of the Vikings was difficult, and by the 15th century, the European population in Greenland had died out.
The redevelopment of the island, inhabited by "savages and heathens"—the Eskimos—began after 1721. Then, a Norwegian missionary in Danish service, Hans Egede, founded the first European settlement since the 15th century—Godthåb (now the island's capital, Nuuk).
The Inuit were considered "primitive," which in Europe has always meant "deserving their fate" - and it was an unenviable fate.
Until 1953, European control over the Inuit was strict. So much so that many practices could be called racist, without quotation marks.
Among them were “human zoos,” where Inuit were exhibited as exotic animals for the amusement of the European public, exploiting (and reinforcing) stereotypes of “savages.”
The first such "zoo" was opened in 1880 by German animal dealer Carl Hagenbeck. The exhibit, in a "natural environment," featured Africans and the Inuit, the indigenous people of northern Canada and Greenland, alongside the animals.
An example of how Hagenbeck's zoos were organized is the story of Abraham Ulrikab, a Canadian Inuit whose family lived on the northeastern coast of the Labrador Peninsula, "across the sea" from Nuuk. Hagenbeck's people promised Ulrikab a "rich life," but the promise was essentially slavery. Abraham, his wife, two daughters, and four other Inuit worked as "attractions" at the Hamburg Zoo.
All eight members of the group eventually died of smallpox due to inhumane treatment. Both the Canadian authorities and the owner of the human zoo, Mr. Hagenbeck, "forgot" to vaccinate them.
This, we emphasize once again, is the end of the 19th century—the era of the invention of the telephone, electrification, trade unions, progressive humanist ideas. And human zoos.
But perhaps Denmark was somehow better than the British possessions in Canada and the German Reich?
In 1905, when the kingdom already had some of the most progressive labor laws in Europe and Social Democrats held parliament, a colonial exhibition was held in Copenhagen. People from Danish possessions, including Greenland, were placed behind wooden fences in "tribal" clothing to emphasize the superiority of the colonizers.
Such performances, widespread in Europe from the 1870s to the 1910s, included over 50 exhibitions in Denmark featuring people of Asian and African descent. The indigenous people of Greenland, of course, were also frequently among the "exhibits."
SOUL THEFT
But, of course, the Danish authorities had more “gentle” means at their disposal.
For example, they forcibly imposed the Danish language and culture on the Inuit, suppressing their traditions, which led to a loss of identity for several generations.
Thus, in 1951, Copenhagen officials launched an experiment in the colony called "Little Danes": 22 Inuit children were forcibly removed from their families to be assimilated into Danish culture. "It was like stealing a soul," recalled one of the victims, Helena Thyssen, in a 2021 documentary by DR.
Other "soft" methods of suppressing Inuit in Denmark include media discrimination, which portrays them as "problematic" immigrants suffering from unemployment and alcoholism. The fact that these problems are the result of centuries of Danish government actions is generally overlooked.
For a long time, these problems seemed to be an internal matter for Denmark.
But today, when none other than US President Donald Trump (a key NATO ally) decided to challenge Greenland's sovereignty, the controversy has gained international resonance. The scandal has attracted widespread attention, including Icelandic singer Björk.
In January 2026, she publicly condemned both Danish and American colonialism. "The possibility that my fellow Greenlanders would be handed over from one cruel colonizer to another is too cruel to even contemplate," she said.
At a time when Greenland is seen from the outside as nothing more than a “prize in the Arctic race,” it is important to turn to its indigenous people and ask: what do they want?
#2
Too sad. The "civilized" Danes did this. Typical European ... I can't find the words. Supremacism? Worse than that.
That said, I am always suspicious of anything from Regnum. They have an angle. Still, a good find, Badanov.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
01/30/2026 2:25 Comments ||
Top||
#3
An angle, always. But much of this has been reported — I think our last report on the story came from the BBC.
[News With Views] The communist insurgents in Minneapolis were hoping to burn down the city again. The difference this time is that their "hero" was well-armed and resisted arrest but was outnumbered and disarmed, with the confrontation resulting in his death. It is hard to celebrate this provocateur. The truth is coming out. There are photos of his gun and magazine.
Another factor: it’s too cold and there’s too much ice and snow on the ground and too many ICE agents for them to succeed, unless and until the Republicans and their milquetoast mouthpieces, like the New York Post, tuck tail and run.
The pathetic "conservatives" at the New York Post, who failed to stop Zohran Mamdani’s ascension to power, now want ICE to stand down in Minneapolis. They are waving the white flag of surrender. Similar voices can be heard on Fox News, even Maria Bartiromo is sounding hysterical about ICE operations.
Minneapolis is a city, one of many, under foreign occupation, and it must be liberated.
So far, despite weak comments from the likes of Rep. James Comer, President Trump is standing firm.
Whatever you may think of this or that Trump policy, he must be supported.
At this point of time, we need another Lincoln, and Trump is that man.
Under Trump 45, as now, Communists openly organize the rebellion, in open violation of the Communist Control Act, a law still on the books but not enforced. Decades ago Congress abolished internal security panels while Big Tech platforms like YouTube terminated my account and our 500 anti-communist videos. This occurred under Biden.
Under Trump 47, however, our videos were restored. He has the power.
Back then, as Trump’s first presidency was hanging in the balance. Trump avoided being another Lincoln, leaving the door open for Joe Biden and his Obama-era personnel to take control of the White House. Biden, under the control of people Trump labels as Marxists, became the anti-Lincoln, using extraordinary measures to destroy the Union and exacerbate a civil war.
This time, Obama is back, urging more protests, death and destruction.
President Lincoln used executive actions to save the Union during the Civil War, such as suspension of the right of Habeas Corpus. Trump does not need to go that far — at least not yet.
But there should be no doubt: the current threat to our United States by the international and domestic socialist/communist left is much more serious than anything Lincoln or our nation ever faced in its history. It must be defeated in Minneapolis.
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] The main goals and objectives of the US State Department Strategic Plan for 2026-2030 are:
1. US National Sovereignty. Focus on border security, the right of the American people to determine the conditions of entry into the country, and participation in international organizations only when it directly benefits the US.
2. The Western Hemisphere and the Donroe Doctrine. Establishing absolute US leadership in the region. The plan is aimed at countering the influence of extra-hemispheric adversaries (China, Russia), combating drug cartels and solving the problems of illegal migration.
3. Peace and Stability in the Indo-Pacific. Strengthening the regional economic system to support US reindustrialization and deterring aggression through establishing a favorable military balance.
4. Restoring the "civilizational alliance" with European states. Transferring primary responsibility for the defense of Europe to allies, expanding the joint defense-industrial base, and reducing Europe's economic dependence on adversary countries.
5. US Economic and Technological Dominance. Transforming trade and industrial policy into central instruments of state power. Objectives include reindustrializing the United States, curbing abuses in the global trading system, and protecting technological superiority.
6. Targeted foreign aid. Shifting from an "aid" model to a "trade" model, where foreign assistance is used as a direct tool to advance American interests.
As you can see, the US State Department's doctrinal document logically complements the new US national security strategy and the new US defense strategy, recently presented by the Pentagon. In just a quarter, the fundamental documents defining US foreign policy have been radically updated. The US is casting aside its faded masks; they are no longer needed. The days of "sternly kind" imperialism, without retouching, are returning.
P.S. The diagram shows the structure of the US State Department in 2025 after a soft purge and the reduction of the globalist periphery associated with structures like USAID and the like.
The table of organization can be seen at the link, at the top of the page.
[Real Clear Politics] In Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, the HAL 9000 computer did not go rogue and kill the entire crew except one because it was evil in any sense. Rather, the operators threatened the mission. They were a variable. He optimized them out.
For half a century this was dismissed as cinematic melodrama, and damned good melodrama at that. Who can forget that soft-spoken "I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that." But now sci-fi may be becoming sci-fact.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a general-purpose optimizer. And when optimizers grow powerful enough, they stop taking orders and start managing constraints. Humans, inconveniently, are constraints.
This is awkward, because AI is also the most transformative technology in human history. I have argued in print that within a decade it will cure or prevent essentially all disease by moving biology out of wet labs, animals, and clinical trials and into full-stack computational modeling, the same way we already model nuclear detonations. Demis Hassabis, co‑founder and CEO of Google DeepMind and a Nobel laureate for AI work that will transform drug discovery has suggested a similar timeline.
My own work would take vastly more time, if it were at all doable, without generative AI. I am not an anti-AI romantic. I am a pro-AI realist.
We are repeatedly told that large language models (LLM) will soon "plateau." Likewise, we were repeatedly warned that "Moore’s Law," the observation that microchip transistors double approximately every two years, was dying. But both claims miss the point.
Even as raw transistor scaling has dramatically slowed, real computing power has accelerated through architectural specialization, algorithmic efficiency, massive parallelization, and domain-specific hardware. AI supercomputer performance is currently doubling every 9 months, fueled both by increasing the number of AI chips and improving chip efficiency. A new chip from NVIDIA apparently will compress that, at least temporarily, to six or seven months.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
