This is how he commented on the decision of the Supreme Court of Karelia, which decided to recognise the actions of the occupying power and the Finnish troops during the war as war crimes and genocide.
“We know this is baseless,” Orpo said.
He also described the Karelia court decision as a “propaganda game” intended to ruin Finland’s image.
Let us recall that Finland fought on the side of Nazi Germany. As early as June 22, 1941, German aircraft used Finnish airfields for flights to attack the territory of the USSR. On June 26, Finland declared war on the Soviet Union.
From autumn 1941 to the end of June 1944, two-thirds of Karelia was under Finnish occupation. During the occupation, the Finns established more than 100 concentration and labour camps for Soviet civilians and prisoners of war.
By the end of 1941, there were more than 20,000 people in the camps; by April 1942, the number had risen to almost 24,000. People there were tortured, beaten and given no medical care.
According to TASS, during the Finnish occupation, more than 7,000 prisoners died in the Petrozavodsk concentration camps alone.
Let us also recall that in the autumn of 2022, the St. Petersburg City Court recognised the blockade of Leningrad as genocide. The German Foreign Ministry refused to recognise the blockade as an act of genocide. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Moscow condemns and rejects the position of the German authorities.
