MOSCOW, May 6. /TASS/. Nazi collaborators who escaped abroad after the war settled in the United States, Canada, Germany, Britain and Australia, where they were portrayed as freedom fighters during the Cold War, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has said in a news release accompanying just-published archival materials related to the search for war criminals and their accomplices in the mass killing of civilian population of the Soviet Union.
"Many war criminals tried to escape justice in countries loyal to the proponents of Nazi ideology. As of 1952, the Soviet Union’s State Security Ministry identified 2,486 accomplices of the Nazi invaders, who escaped abroad," the FSB noted.
Among them were 692 criminals, identified on the basis of testimonies by witnesses and victims, who settled in the US (including 138 Ukrainian and 183 Baltic nationalists), 428 in Canada (125 Ukrainian and 145 Baltic nationalists), 420 in Germany (including 115 Ukrainian and 69 Baltic nationalists), 309 in Australia (including 70 Ukrainian and 99 Baltic nationalists), and 218 in Britain (52 Ukrainian and 44 Baltic nationalists).
The FSB emphasized that during the Cold War initiated by the West against the Soviet Union, all these war criminals were declared "freedom fighters."
"Having changed their patrons, they continued to engage in activities they were familiar with: they trained saboteurs and terrorists to be sent into the Soviet Union, participated in inciting nationalist sentiment in the Soviet republics, supported armed bands in the Baltics and Ukraine who terrorized the local population," the FSB pointed out.