President Putin laying a wreath at the memorial to fallen Soviet soldiers in the Vestre Gravlund cemetery.
A granite stele was installed in the Vestre Gravlund cemetery in 1947 above the common grave of 347 Soviet POWs, 167 of them unidentified, who died in Nazi concentration camps in Oslo and its environs in 1941–1945. The stele is inscribed, “Norway thanks you.”
A granite memorial slab was unveiled near the stele on May 9, 2000.
All told, there were 100,000 Soviet POWs and internees in Norway during World War Two. According to Norwegian statistics, 10,000 of them died in concentration camps and 2,400 in coastline battles as Norway was liberated from the Nazi invaders.