VOLGOGRAD, July 23. /TASS/. The troops of Nazi Germany and its allies inflicted almost 358 million rubles worth of damage to the Stalingrad (now Volgograd) Region during the Great Patriotic War, Alexey Dementyev, the director of the Stalingrad Battle Museum-Reserve, told TASS on Sunday.

The Volgograd regional court is now considering the regional prosecutor's request to recognize the Nazi crimes near Stalingrad during the war as genocide of the peoples of the USSR. The Stalingrad Battle Museum-Reserve is providing the court with materials on Nazi crimes.

"The material damage caused by the enemy army to citizens, farms, public organizations, state enterprises and institutions of the Stalingrad Region [during the Battle of Stalingrad] amounted to 357.9 million rubles," Dementyev said, adding that the damage was assessed by a special commission of the Stalingrad Region.

In June, the 14-volume case on the recognition of Nazi crimes in Stalingrad as genocide was submitted to the Volgograd regional court by the Volgograd regional prosecutor's office. The press service of the regional court reported that the case file contains information about the crimes committed by the Nazi invaders against at least 130,000 civilians, as well as conscripts who served in the Red Army. On August 1, the court will hear witnesses in the case.

The Battle of Stalingrad (which began on July 17, 1942 and ended on February 2, 1943), one of the largest battles of the Great Patriotic War in terms of scale, duration and number of participants, took place on the territory of Volgograd and the Volgograd Region (formerly: Stalingrad and the Stalingrad Region). It radically changed the course of the war and was a precursor to the victory of the Soviet Army over the Nazi troops. The year 2023 marks the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad.