MOSCOW, March 19 (RAPSI) – Yevgeny Velikhov, head of the Public Chamber Council, has appealed to President Vladimir Putin to amend legislation to declare all those who are considered missing in action since World War II dead.

His other request is that any undeclared deposits belonging to war veterans with the Soviet Union’s State Bank be indexed.

“The current legislation does not allow us to pay proper respects to the 5 million or so of our fallen fathers and grandfathers,” reads the statement on the Public Chamber’s website. “In order to declare war MIAs dead, the relatives would need to inform the court about the possible circumstances of their missing relative’s death, the day the hostilities stopped, and the reason they need to declare their missing relative dead. They would also need to provide an inventory list of the missing relative’s property and to ensure that the missing relative’s children attend the court hearing.”

“Another issue concerns the payment of deposits opened for veterans of the Great Patriotic War at the USSR State Bank,” Velikhov said. “The Bank of Russia’s archives contain about 2.6 million serviceman accounts that were opened during the Great Patriotic War. The balance on these accounts has shrunk from 574.7 million rubles in 1952 to 69,000 rubles today.”

Velikhov believes that the reason for this is that current legislation does not provide for indexing depreciated deposits. “At this point, 12% of the deposits of servicemen who took part in the Great Patriotic War have not been paid out,” he said.