A forest glade seems an unusual place to find a hunk of granite emblazoned with the hammer and sickle and inscribed with Cyrillic script.
“It has been called the most beautiful of war memorials,” says my guide, Ville. “I’m not sure what that says about other war memorials, though,” he quickly adds.
It’s less the memorial and more the setting that appeals to the eye. The Soviet Monument, which remembers 453 Russian soldiers killed in battle during the Continuation War (1941-1944) is cradled by tall pines and serenaded by chittering chaffinches. It sits just off a country road on the edge of the Finnish city of Hanko, south-west of Helsinki, once a key strategic port at the mouth of the Gulf…
This article was originally published by Telegraph.co.uk. Read the original article here.