In Karelia, Cossacks arrived in the Sandarmokh tract to prevent activists and diplomats from honoring the memory of the victims of Stalin's repressions

Dozens of pro-government activists came to the Sandarmokh memorial cemetery in Karelia, where mass shootings took place during the time of Joseph Stalin, on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Great Terror. As From Karelia with freedom and Memorial write, they are preventing representatives of foreign embassies from remembering the repressed.

Every year on August 5, diplomats from Poland, Germany, Finland, France, Israel and other countries working in Russia, as well as human rights activists and concerned individuals, come to the Sandarmokh tract near Medvezhyegorsk.

In the morning, Cossacks, activists of the Young Guard, and representatives of other pro-government movements arrived by bus to the site of the executions and burials. Many were dressed in camouflage uniforms, and some had their faces covered with masks. As From Karelia with freedom writes, they brought with them “powerful speakers from which Victory songs flowed onto the execution pits, drowning out the reading of the names of those killed by the NKVD.”

Memorial writes that pro-government activists chanted at the Jewish monument: “Jews sponsored Hitler.” Posters about Emilia Slabunova, a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia, were hung on the trees: “Emilia Edgardovna! Why are you there, where there is fascism, LGBT, pedophilia?”

From Karelia with freedom also writes that in the morning, for some unknown reason, security forces tried to get into the apartment of Petrozavodsk activist Andrei Litvin. He was planning to go to a funeral event in Sandarmokh. There has been no contact with Litvin since then, notes 7x7.

In addition, local blogger Alexey Trunov, who was also on his way to the tract, was detained in Petrozavodsk in the morning. When he was released half a day later, he said that FSB officers came to him and searched his house. Formally, this was registered as an "inspection of the premises."

According to the blogger, the reason was a denunciation from an unknown person that “he communicates with people of non-traditional orientation.” Trunov was taken to the FSB building in Petrozavodsk, where they threatened to “shove a bottle up [his] ass.”

Updated at 20:20 . Details about the detention of Alexander Trunov have been added.