It is a long tradition for people in the Norwegian-Russian borderland to mark the ending of the Second World War together. In Kirkenes, October 25th is celebrated as the day when the area was liberated from the German Nazi occupation by the Red Army in 1944. Last year King Harald of Norway, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and several other high-ranking officials from both countries met in Kirkenes to mark the 70 anniversary for the liberation.
Every year in May, a Russian delegation takes the trip from Murmansk to the northeastern parts of Norway, stopping at several memorials and other places of historical interest along the way.
On Tuesday a delegation of officials from the Murmansk Regional Government and Finnmark County Administration visited Kirkenes to lay down wreaths at the Memorial to the Soviet Soldier.
Senator for Murmansk Oblast in the Federation Council Igor Chernyshenko said in his speech at the ceremony that the memory of the fight against the Nazis is one of the things the people of Finnmark and Murmansk have in common that they can be proud of. “Here in North Norway many pages in the history of the fight against fascism were written,” Chernyshenko said.
Remi Strand form Finnmark County Administration had joined the Russians on their trip through the borderland. He says that people in Finnmark and Northwest Russia always have had close contacts, and that it is of special importance that these ties are kept and strengthened now, when the situation on higher political levels is difficult. Finnmark County Administration wants to strengthen the dialogue with people in Northwest Russia through the Barents cooperation. “It is only natural that the regional level takes up a larger space when contacts on the national level are halted,” Strand says, and adds that the administration feels that they have support from central authorities to continue this work.
The delegation continued their trip to Neiden outside Kirkenes, where there is a memorial to Soviet soldiers who fell during the liberation of this settlement, and later to Vardø and Kiberg, which used to be called “Little Moscow” because of the high number of people working as partisans for the Soviet forces.
