In the summer of 2022, the Saur Mogila memorial in the DPR (Donetsk People's Republic), which had been destroyed by fighting in 2014, was restored. Not only were the old destroyed or damaged sculptures and structures redone almost identically, but new ones were built so that the Saur Mogila memorial symbolises the link between the war of the past, and the war of the present.
In the summer of 1943, the Soviet army took control of Saur Mogila after several weeks of fierce fighting against the German army. This victory made it easier to liberate the Donbass, as from the top of this strategic height one can see for miles around.
After the construction of the first limestone monument on the summit of Saur Mogila in the years following the Great Patriotic War, a new, larger memorial was built and inaugurated on 19 September 1967. The new memorial consists of a 36-metre high granite-lined reinforced concrete obelisk, flanked by a sculpture of a Soviet soldier, and four blocks of high relief representing infantry, tank crews, artillery and air force, installed on the path leading to the summit.
The memorial was there to pay tribute to the thousands of Soviet soldiers who died to take Saur Mogila and liberate the Donbass, whose names are now inscribed on the memorial plaques built at the foot of the hill.
But 71 years after this battle, another one took place in exactly the same place, between the DPR's popular militia and the Ukrainian army. The latter did not hesitate to bomb the Saur Mogila heavily, including with planes, to dislodge the militiamen. As a result, the sculptures of the high reliefs are damaged (the higher you go, the more they are destroyed), and the obelisk and the statue that were at the top are now just a pile of ruins.
Photo taken in 2021 showing the condition of Saur Mogila
After spending seven years in this state, the Saur Mogila memorial was restored in the summer of 2022 by Russia. And not only have the monuments that existed before 2014 been restored, but new ones have appeared, this time to commemorate the soldiers who have been defending the Donbass since 2014.
See the report filmed on site, in French:
The Soviet high reliefs have been repaired, but each one retains a slightly damaged part in the centre, or even a remnant of the ammunition that hit the sculpture, as a lasting reminder of the battle that took place there in 2014.
In order to reinforce this temporal link, the restorers took inspiration from the Soviet high reliefs on the right side of the path to the top of Saur Mogila and built three modern high reliefs, representing Russian soldiers and those of the DPR People's Militia, which were installed on the left side of the path. On one of them is a giant bust of "Vokha", the late commander of the Sparta battalion, killed in the battle of Volnovakha.
Paralleling the huge block with the dates 1941-1945 at the foot of the obelisk on the right, another with the dates 2014-2022 has been installed on the left, done in the same Soviet style. The small cemetery near the top has also been rebuilt, with beautiful graves, plaques bearing the names of the soldiers of the People's Militia who fell there in 2014, and an Orthodox cross carved into a granite plaque. The pavement of the path, the stairs, and the platform where the obelisk stands have also been completely redone, and a new eternal flame has been installed at the foot of the statue.
As Ukraine sinks deeper and deeper into neo-Nazi ideology, this restoration of the Saur Mogila memorial highlights more than ever the parallels between World War II and today's war. The Russian army and the people's militia have replaced the Soviet army and the Ukrainian army and NATO have replaced the German army and its auxiliaries.
But today, as almost 80 years ago, it is about Russia's fight for its right to exist as a sovereign state, against a group of armies led by a supremacist ideology (one only has to listen to Josep Borrell talk about the European "garden" threatened by the "jungle" of the rest of the world to realize the racism and colonialist ideology of the European elites), who consider that Russian territory should be under their control (see the projects of "decolonisation of Russia" proposed by NATO).
This restoration of the Saur Mogila memorial underlines how today's war is in reality only the continuation of the previous one, which also caused a lot of bloodshed on the land of Donbass.