The Kola Peninsula has hundreds of war memorials honoring Soviet soldiers and victims of Nazi German aggression during World War II. Today, new monuments are springing up in honor of Russian aggressors and war criminals fighting in Ukraine.

One of them was officially opened last weekend in Titovka, a site in the heavily militarized zone just a few kilometers from the border with Norway.

However, unlike most Soviet World War II memorials in the area, the new monument does not honor fallen men, but rather the war and the battle itself.

The monument has the shape of a small brick wall and includes three plaques with inscriptions. The top one explains that “this memorial is erected in honor of the participants in the fight against fascism, Nazism and terrorism”.

The second board includes a quote from Vladimir Putin.

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“Today it is our common duty not to allow the resurgence of Nazism which has caused so much suffering to the peoples of various countries. It is essential to preserve and transmit to our descendants the truth about the events of the years of war, common spiritual values ​​and traditional brotherly friendship.

The third panel, paradoxically, quotes part of a poem by Anna Akhmatova, the 20th century poem which itself brutally experienced the horrors of the Stalinist era.

“We know what awaits us now and what is happening today. The hour of bravery has come in our time. And bravery will not forsake us,” the poem reads.

However, Anna Akhmatova was not a patriotic Soviet who praised war and repression. Rather the opposite. It was at the antipodes of militarism and the repressive regime. And the people behind Titovka’s monument clearly don’t understand the anti-authoritarian nature of his writing.

Akhmatova was born in Odessa and studied in kyiv. She experienced the blockade of Leningrad and regularly read for soldiers in hospitals and on the front line.

But several of his most famous works were essentially directed against the totalitarian regime of the time. And his work was condemned and censored by Stalinist authorities. Her first husband Nikolai Gumilyov was executed and her son spent many years in the Gulag.

The opening of the new monument in Titovka is actively covered on social media by local semi-militarized groups such as Vityaz. The group, which mainly includes former military and FSB officers, on its VK page states that its main mission is “to prevent the cultivation of false values ​​among young people and to educate the spirit of patriotism”.

The monument is located next to a memorial praising 2WW soldiers and a small outdoor exhibit showing the intense war action in the area. Titovka was controlled by German invaders for much of the war and the remains of a cable car used to transport goods to the front can still be seen at the site.

Nearby are several large military bases, operated by the Northern Fleet and its 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade. Also nearby is the 61st Naval Infantry Brigade at Sputnik.

A large number of soldiers from local brigades are taking part in the war against Ukraine and the losses have been dramatic. Several hundred men were reportedly killed outside Kharkiv in the first part of the offensive and many more in later clashes.

This includes a significant number from the 140th special detachment in Vidyaevo.