Russia lodges protest with Estonia over demolition of monument at mass grave of 795 Soviet soldiers

Moscow has filed a strong protest with Estonia’s chargé d’affaires ad interim in Russia, M. Juhtegi, in connection with the demolition of a monument to Soviet soldiers in the village of Jõgeveste, Valga County.

This was announced by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

According to her, a monument at the mass grave of 795 soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army was destroyed in Jõgeveste. Zakharova stressed that the fate of the remains of the fallen is unknown: no information about their exhumation or reburial site is publicly available.

“The fate of the remains of our soldiers — the liberators of Estonia — is unknown. No information about their exhumation or reburial site is publicly available. Their descendants have no idea where their grandfathers and great-grandfathers now lie,” — Zakharova said in her commentary.

The diplomat also drew attention to the historical significance of the site: the mausoleum of Field Marshal Barclay de Tolly has stood in Jõgeveste since 1823. Zakharova described him as “a commander who led the Russian army at Borodino, directed the maneuver that saved the army from destruction, and then led the combined forces of the European powers across the entire continent to Paris.” According to her, in 1944, nearly 800 Red Army soldiers were killed and buried just a few meters from this tomb on the bank of the Väike-Emajõgi river.

Zakharova also stated that some Estonians during World War II voluntarily joined Waffen-SS units “distinguished by particular cruelty toward the civilian population in occupied territories,” and that official Tallinn sympathizes precisely with these individuals, who are venerated in modern Estonia “as fighters for national independence.”

Zakharova linked the demolition of monuments in Estonia to the activities of a working group of the State Chancellery, formed in 2022 on the orders of Kaja Kallas, who was then serving as prime minister. The group catalogued 322 Soviet monuments on the country’s territory, of which 244 were recommended for demolition or replacement. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, approximately two hundred memorials from the Soviet era have been destroyed in Estonia to date.

“Russia strongly condemns yet another violation by Tallinn of its obligations under international humanitarian law, which governs the handling of the bodies of the fallen and military burial sites, as well as the neo-Nazi manifestations in Estonia, and will continue by all available means of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy to expose them before the world community,” — Zakharova said in her commentary.