Victory Day parade is celebrated every year. The main holiday of the country. People will take to the streets of the city – children and adults with flags and balloons. Everywhere you can hear military songs, see theatrical productions and even dance a waltz. But war is not a holiday. It ends not with victory, but with broken lives on both sides. It ends with mass graves. In the cemetery, in the silence you can feel the horror of the war.
In 2011, a military burial was found in the village of Svobodnoye, Kamennogorsk district. Locals were looking for metal to hand over, and found bones. As a local resident of the village recalls: «There were mounds in the forest. We burned pioneer bonfires, collected snowdrops. No one knew that there was a burial there. Back in Soviet times, a family came looking for their dead son. They were brought to the forest, they said: «Well, where is your son buried? We don’t know. They were taken to the officers’ mess, fed and sent home. And then they found it.»