Väinämöinen was a Finnish coastal defence ship, the sister ship of the Finnish Navy's flagship Ilmarinen and also the first ship of her class. She was built at the Crichton-Vulcan shipyard in Turku and was launched in 1932. Following the end of the Continuation War, Väinämöinen was handed over to the Soviet Union as war reparations and renamed Vyborg. The ship remained in Soviet hands until her scrapping in 1966.
Väinämöinen in 1938
Continuation War
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The Continuation War, also known as the Second Soviet-Finnish War, was a conflict fought by Finland and Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. It began with a Finnish declaration of war and invasion on 25 June 1941 and ended on 19 September 1944 with the Moscow Armistice. The Soviet Union and Finland had previously fought the Winter War from 1939 to 1940, which ended with the Soviet failure to conquer Finland and the Moscow Peace Treaty. Numerous reasons have been proposed for the Finnish decision to invade, with regaining territory lost during the Winter War regarded as the most common. Other justifications for the conflict include Finnish President Risto Ryti's vision of a Greater Finland and Commander-in-Chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim's desire to annex East Karelia.
Finnish soldiers at the VT-line of fortifications during the Soviet Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive in June 1944
Finnish flags at half-mast in Helsinki on 13 March 1940 after the Moscow Peace Treaty became public
Vasilyevsky Island in Saint Petersburg, pictured in 2017. During the Winter and Continuation Wars, Leningrad, as it was then known, was of strategic importance to both sides.
Finnish, German and Soviet military formations at the start of the Continuation War in June and July 1941