The 25 tons-heavy T-34 tank was supposed to be on display at the Partisan Museum in Kiberg near Vardø, according to correspondence between the association and the Police in Finnmark. The museum is run by the Vardøhus Museum Association.
The letters, obtained by the Barents Observer from the post-journal of the police, are from the 16-month period February 2020 to June 2021 and discussed whether the T-34 tank is regulated by Norway’s laws on weapons import.
It is Remi Strand who has signed the letters. He is deputy head of the association, and a self-proclaimed Pomor, a term used about people living along the coast of northwest Russia and traded with Norway until the 1917 revolution.
The first letter where Strand informs the police about the initiative is signed on February 16, 2020. This is simultaneous as patriotic hardliner Sergei Goncharov from Murmansk again visits Norway.
The two then travel together to Oslo for a seminar about the Finnmark partisans at Akershus Fortress on February 20. Goncharov here gives a lecture about Russian perspectives on the Kirkenes-Petsamo operations in 1944, the
Facebook site of the Partisan Museum informs with photos from the event.
A few months before, during the days of the 75-anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of Eastern Finnmark, Remi Strand facilitated the first-ever ‘
Tour de Memorial’ to Norway by
uniformed kids with Yunarmiya, Russia’s military-patriotic youth movement.
Strand refuses to comment on his cooperation with the Russian Northern Fleet to get the T-34 over the border to Norway.
In the letter to the police, though, he writes that the tank belongs to Northern Fleet and is made available for a five-year period.
“T-34 is a very important artefact to explain especially the Soviet Union’s effort during the liberation throughout Europe,” Strand argued.
