Battle of Raate Road The Battle of Raate Road was fought during the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland in January 1940 , as a part of the Battle of Suomussalmi . On December 7 , 1939 , the Soviet 163rd Division captured Suomussalmi , but found itself trapped deep inside Finnish territory , and the Soviet 44th Rifle ( Ukrainian ) Division was sent to aid the 163rd . Over the next week , Colonel Hjalmar Siilasvuo ' s outnumbered 9th Division stopped and decisively defeated the Soviet forces on the Raate - Suomussalmi road . This battle proved the effectiveness of Finnish motti tactics . Background . During the battle of Suomussalmi , the Finns cut the Raate road on December 11 , 1939 . The action blocked the second , southern supply route to the Soviet 163rd Rifle Division in the town of Suomussalmi . The Finns also cut the first , northern supply route on 13 December , and the Soviets were forced to open a new supply route through Lake Kiantajärvi . The 163rd Division was nearly surrounded and suffered major casualties in Suomussalmi . The situation was getting worse , and on 20 December the commander of the 163rd Division , Andrei Zelentsov , asked permission to retreat from Suomussalmi . In response , part of the 44th Division , the 1st Battalion of the 305th Infantry Regiment , and the 3rd Battalion of the 662nd Infantry Regiment , were sent to reinforce the 163rd Division troops near Suomussalmi . Zelentsov ' s concerns were not understood at Red Army headquarters , as the entire 44th Division was about to move along the Raate road . Most military historians date the battle of the Raate road from 1 January to 7 January 1940 . The Raate road was though a battlefield during the entire Winter War . Before the main battle against the 44th Division , the Finns fought retreat battles against a part of 163rd Division on the Raate road . Furthermore , some battles were fought on the east side , near the border , on the road during the rest of the Winter War . Battle . At the start of the battle of Raate road , Siilasvuo ' s 9th Division had already destroyed the Soviet 163rd Division . After that , it received orders to destroy the Soviet 44th Division , which was stopped on the road near Haukila , 12 kilometers from Suomussalmi . The Finnish 9th Division was split in four squadrons , each named after their commanders . The decisive battle was ordered to begin on January 5 , 1940 , 08 : 30 . The battles focused on Haukila , where most of the Soviet troops were located and where squadrons " Mandelin " and " Mäkiniemi " attacked . Squadron " Mäkiniemi " had started moving towards Haukila a few days before the official attack . At the same time , the fresh 3rd NKVD Border Guard Regiment was just arriving to assist the Soviet 44th Division . By the following morning , the Finnish troops held strong blocking positions reinforced with mines at several points in the midst of the Soviet column . During January 6 , heavy fighting occurred all along the Raate road as the Finns continued to break up the enemy forces into smaller pieces . The Soviets attempted to overrun Finnish roadblock s with armor , losing numerous tanks in frontal attacks , but were unsuccessful . Finally , at 21 : 30 , Alexei Vinogradov belatedly ordered his division to retreat back to the Soviet border . The despairing Soviet troops began to escape north over Lake Kiantajärvi . Many soldiers froze to death without proper clothing or supply ; one Finnish soldier said he saw Soviet soldiers in a frozen campsite and had to poke one in the eye with a stick to see if he was really dead . Remnants of Soviet units had already tried to escape to the east , but were blocked by squadron " Kari " . Further in the east , squadron " Fagernäs " could not keep a strategic bridge under Finnish control . On January 7 , squadron " Fagernäs " recaptured the bridge and before noon all Soviet resistance was suppressed . The mopping - up went on for two days , during which the Finns rounded up hundreds of starving , frozen Ukrainians . Other remnants of the 44th Division were forced to withdraw from the area , evading through the northern forests while under pursuit by the Finns , finally reaching the border in several small groups . The Finnish army captured a huge amount of materiel in this battle . Casualties . For many years , Finnish historians estimated the Soviet losses to be around 17 , 000 men . The estimation was based on the interrogation of the prisoners of war captured in early January . Officers of the Soviet 27th Infantry Regiment had given their casualties at 70 percent and the Finns assumed that the strength of the 44th Division was over 20 , 000 men . Western historians conformed their figures to Finnish estimations . The Soviets challenged the number of casualties published in the Western world immediately in January and claimed to have lost no more than 900 men , mostly from frostbite , while inflicting an estimated 2 , 000 Finn fatalities . Later Finnish historians conducted further efforts to ascertain the number of Soviet casualties in the battle . The Finns captured over 5 , 000 rifles , and , furthermore , a tag of the North Finland Group showed the Finns replaced 1 , 200 old rifles with the newer Soviet models . Most recent Finnish studies indicate that the Soviets lost at least 7 , 000 – 9 , 000 men . The Finns quickly buried the Soviet dead as the weather warmed during the early spring to reduce the risk of epidemics . Mass graves were marked on maps and were mounted with a cross or a pole . Later the maps disappeared . Around Easter , the Soviets made a request that they would like to gather the dead and bring them back home , but the Finns did not allow Soviet Army officials to cross the border but the Finns delivered 300 bodies from near the village of Raate to Soviet officials . After the Continuation War , the Soviets were not interested in their deceased . The Red Army occupied the Raate road shortly , gathered wartime junk but left the bodies alone . The fate of the Ukrainian Division remained unmentioned in Soviet historiography for decades . According to the Russian historian Yuri Kilin , the Stavka set up a research commission in January 1940 to investigate the number of casualties . The Commission reported 4 , 674 total casualties : 1 , 001 dead , 1 , 430 wounded and 2 , 243 missing . At the turn of the year , the strength of the division was 13 , 962 men and by the end of the Raate Road battle it was at 9 , 288 men . According to the report , the division was understaffed , because two battalions of the 305th Infantry Regiment were deployed elsewhere . Kilin calculated that some troops returned after the report , so the number of the missing is lower . Later , research by the Ukrainian historian Oleg Bozhko yielded similar numbers as he used the same source . The Stavka report was published in January 1940 , in the middle of the Winter War . The statistics of the report start from 1 January , and by this time the division had already suffered heavy losses for two weeks . The Stavka report did not mention casualties suffered on the Raate Road by other units , along the advancement of the 44th Division . Aftermath . Thereafter , the area saw only a few minor skirmishes . Soviet executions . The Soviet commander , Vinogradov , and two of his chief officers , Volkov and Pahomov , retreated in the middle of crucial battles . According to the Stavka report , this act had a fatal influence on morale . As they reached the Soviet lines four days later they were court - martial ed , found guilty and sentenced to death ; the executions were carried out immediately . The Stavka itself had made the crucial decisions to keep the 44th Division on the Raate Road after the 163rd had lost Suomussalmi village . The Ukrainian veteran of the Raate Road Sergeant Pyotr Andrevitch Morozov was interviewed in 1991 by the Finnish non - fiction writer Leo Karttimo . According to Morozov the Finns returned prisoners of war , but none of them managed to get back to Ukraine as the Soviet secret service NKVD executed them all in summer 1940 . Monuments . Today , the former battlefield is the site of the Monument of the Winter War dedicated to all who died in the war on both sides . The memorial includes a field of thousands of stones as symbolic gravestones of the Soviet soldiers who fell in the battle . The Russian monument was installed in September 1994 , and the Ukrainians installed their own monument in the spring of 1998 .