Russian prosecutors have asked a court to recognize crimes committed by Nazi Germany in the Moscow region during World War Two as genocide and believe that around 6.4 trillion roubles ($82.3 billion) in damage was caused. 

It was unclear whether the move was a prelude to a new financial compensation claim from Russia to modern Germany, with which relations have soured badly over Moscow's war in Ukraine. 

But the statement, which cited the need to defend Russia's national interests while restoring historical justice, appeared part of a wider effort by Moscow to gird its citizens for what it says is an existential war with the West, which some Russian officials have likened to the one fought by the Soviet Union against the Nazis. 

The prosecutors asked a Moscow regional court "to recognize as war crimes and crimes against humanity, and as genocide against the Soviet people, the established and newly revealed crimes committed by the German fascist invaders" in the Moscow region between October 1941 and January 1942. 

More than 26,000 people were killed in the region during that time, they said in a statement, with Soviet citizens subjected to torture, robbery, forced labour and expulsions. It was not clear how soon the court would rule on the request. 

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Some 27 million Soviet people lost their lives in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War, the memory of which is regarded as sacred by many Russians. 

Eight decades later, President Vladimir Putin portrays what he calls a "special military operation" as a necessary move to "denazify" Ukraine and prevent "genocide" against Russian-speakers in its eastern Donbas region. 

Ukraine and its Western allies reject that narrative as a false one to justify what they say is an illegal war of conquest. 

Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, estimates it lost at least 8 million of its own people during World War Two.

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