August 22, 2018 was 20 years since the unveiling of the monument with the inscription "People, do not kill each other" in the memorial complex Sandarmoh in Karelia. Unique twenty-year footage of newsreels appeared on the YouTube-channel "Delo Dmitrieva".
In 1998, the first Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repression was held in Sandarmokh: thousands of people came to the memorial — relatives of those who were repressed here during the Great Terror (1937–1938). Representatives of the Karelian government, the administration of Medvezhyegorsk district, deputies, as well as one of the discoverers of Sandarmokh, researcher Yury Dmitriev took part in the unveiling of the monument in the entrance area of the complex.
"The first of September is coming. You will have a lesson of courage, you will be brought up on heroic deeds that were committed during the war. And here is a lesson of memory before the beginning of the academic year, a lesson of conscience. Look at these adults — grandparents — who are crying here. They are crying because sixty years ago innocent people were killed here. They were killed, because there was such an ideology, the ideology of fear — it was necessary to drive everyone into one stall, so that everyone would stand in one place. If someone escaped in one or the other direction, they were simply ruthlessly killed. They were killed precisely in this place. So, when you go to school on the first of September, do remember, please, this lesson of conscience, this lesson of memory. Because today's day and today's meeting can be called the memory of descendants. Here came those who remember. I hope, grandparents, moms and dads, and you will remember this day and share this sacred memory of the tragic days of our life. Let us ensure that it will never happen again, that people will not kill each other," Dmitriev said.
In August 2018, a meeting of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation was held in Medvezhyegorsk, and the fate of the memorial was discussed. One of the important issues was the restoration of the monument. In 2006, the bas-relief "Shooting with the Guardian Angel" fell from the stone. For 12 years the Government of Karelia has not been able to find money for its restoration.
Since 2016, authorities have ceased to participate in the Day of Remembrance. The same year, Yury Dmitriev was arrested on charges of producing child pornography. On August 25, representatives of the Russian Military Historical Society will start working on the territory of the memorial. They intend to find "burial places of prisoners of Finnish concentration camps and soldiers killed in combat against the Finnish occupiers in 1941–1944".
In 2017, historians of Petrozavodsk State University put forward the hypothesis that Finns could execute Soviet Red Army soldiers and prisoners in Sandarmokh. Сorrespondents of «7x7» refute these hypotheses In the investigation "Rewriting Sandarmokh".
