On 4 September, Karelian historian Sergei Verigin and spokesmen for the Russian Military-Historical Society held a press conference about their recent excavations at Sandarmokh.

Their words were widely reported by the official RIA Novosti / Russia Today news agency — but only in Russian. The usual simultaneous publication in English and other languages was, for some reason, lacking.

“They were in a great hurry to find the remains of Soviet soldiers at Sandarmokh who had been brutally murdered by the Finns, and not to uncover victims of earlier Soviet executions,” comments today’s Novaya gazeta
(10 September 2018, No 99).

“They were in even more of a hurry to say how well it had all turned out. So they began excavating before they received the necessary permission and had to report on what they’d found before the remains had been examined by experts.”