Russia is demanding that Germany recognize the Siege of Leningrad in World War II not only as a war crime, but as genocide. The Russian Foreign Ministry sent a diplomatic note to this effect to the German Foreign Office, reported the state news agency TASS in Moscow. The note criticized Germany for its allegedly “contradictory handling” of the past. German crimes from the colonial era are recognized as genocide, but the Nazi crimes against the peoples of the Soviet Union during World War II are not, the note stated. “The Russian side insists on official recognition of such atrocities of the Th…