Same here, my father was born in Jänisjärvi and in the 90's and 2000's (2000-2009) we visited our ancestral farmstead there multible times and helped the, funnily enough, family deported from Ukraine there. Olga and Nikolai, who where BORN there, did try to their best, but it was quite something.

Two funny memories come up from one of those early trips to visit them, circa 2003 or somerhing; we delivered a small portaple milking unit to them, so Olga wouldnt have to have so hard time milking their small herd of (3 or 5?) dairy cows.

Other one is we replaced a part of their broken plumbing (my father is an Master Constuctor [en tiedä mitä se on englanniksi, AMK-uudistusta edeltävä Rakennusmestari]) and took home piece of history: a wooden plumbing pipe peace that they had used in their clear water well.

Russia really changed after 2010's and its sad how our old "family friends" seemingly quickly turned against us and then we lost contact. Luckily few of the younger and smarter ones got out before "All this fucking shit, AGAIN.".

DAMN IT. Confilicting feelings. As is perhaps the whole " special finnish-russian relations" (unless you ask people from the west coast, they are just racist fucks, those swede loving bootlickers).

They need soldiers to fight a war in Ukraine and empty forests do not need infrastructure.