Vandals deface Soviet-Afghanistan war memorial
A Tallinn memorial to the fallen in the Soviet War in Afghanistan has been vandalized.
Spokespersons for the Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) say that the memorial, on Tondiloo in the Lasnamäe district of the capital, had had paint poured on it.
The culprits have yet to be apprehended, and the PPA has launched criminal proceedings under section of the Penal Code concerning the debasement of the memory of the deceased, BNS reports.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 led to a protracted war through most of the 1980s, a conflict which has been seen as a factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union from the end of that decade and into the 1990s.
Nearly 14,500 Soviet military deaths, plus close to 54,000 casualties, were reported through the course of the war, with estimated figures for the Mujahideen estimated at far more killed - 56,000 - than wounded (17,000).
According to several sources, more than 1,600 men from Estonia, then under Soviet occupation, were drafted into serving in the ten-year war, with close to 40 never returning home
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