A memorial to Finnish soldiers was removed near St. Petersburg

In Primorsk, Leningrad Region, a monument to Finnish soldiers who died during the Soviet-Finnish and Second World Wars was dismantled. This was reported by Ilta-Sanomat newspaper.

Formally, the memorial was removed in compliance with the court’s decision. In September 2022, the court ruled that the stone tombstone and name plates are considered “arbitrary construction”. At the same time, the company that was engaged in the installation of the monument in 2019 reported that the memorial was installed with all the permits of the local authorities. The company also confirmed that it had completely dismantled the monument in accordance with the court’s decision.

On the central stone of the memorial was written “To the inhabitants of Koivisto who fell in the war 1939-1944” in Finnish and Russian. On the rest of the plates are 102 names of natives of the city who died during the Soviet-Finnish and Second World Wars.

Koivisto was the Finnish name of Primorsk until 1948. The city was annexed to the USSR in 1940 as a result of the Soviet-Finnish war. From 1941 to 1944, the city was occupied by Finnish troops – Finland, having joined the Nazi bloc, hoped to return lost lands.

The newspaper notes that the memorial was demolished after the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to St. Petersburg on the anniversary of the breakthrough of the blockade of Leningrad, where he “highly appreciated the decisions made by the Russian courts last fall, according to which the blockade of Leningrad was genocide and what was in it, including Finnish army is also to blame”.

• The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia sharply criticizes and considers unfriendly the demolition of monuments from the times of the USSR in European countries, where they are also recognized as symbols of the Soviet occupation.