Russians received controversial Villinki cottage as a gift

print this

The summer cottage which Soviet and later Russian military attachés stationed in Helsinki were allowed to keep for decades within a closed military area on the island of Itä-Villinki was a gift that the Finns built and donated to the Russians.
      Moreover, the State of Finland did not demand any rent for the site or the property from the Russians.
      The somewhat controversial summer cottage came to light only when the land area which was under the management of the Finnish Defence Forces was purchased by the Senaatti-kiinteistöt real estate company two years ago, and the new owner started to clarify the ownership arrangements and rental agreements pertaining to the buildings on the property.
     
According to the information received from the Defence Staff on Wednesday, the Russians were offered an opportunity to lease the site of their summer cottage in the same way as the other cottage owners on Itä-Villinki do, but the Russians decided to give it up, and the cottage was put on the market.
      The most awkward question - that of how and on whose authority the summer home of a foreign military attaché could have been located in the closed military area - remains unanswered.
     
The representative of the landowner, Tomi Suomalainen of Senaatti-kiinteistöt, declined to comment on the matter, and turned the questions over to the Defence Staff, where in turn contracts were said to belong to the Ministry of Defence.
      Senior Adviser for the Environment Antti Kivipelto from the Ministry of Defence eventually reported that no written document has been found relating to the cottage. Apparently, an oral decision to build the cottage and to hand it over to the Russians was secretly made in the Ministry of Defence, or perhaps even higher up, about 40 to 50 yers ago.
      While it is not known exactly when the cottage was built, the story goes that it was put up after the strategic Porkkala Peninsula had been handed back to the Finns at the end of the 1950s.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Russian military attaché had summer cottage within closed military area (5.10.2005)

Helsingin Sanomat