Staff of the Crimean excise customs post visited memorial sites in Simferopol, laid flowers and honoured the heroes who liberated the Crimean peninsula. Source: Central Excise Customs (CAT).
Among the places they visited was the Eternal Flame memorial complex in Gagarin Park — one of the city's landmark sites recalling the trials and heroism of the war years, where the remains of an Unknown Soldier rest.
They also paid tribute at Victory Square. In April 1944 Soviet soldiers killed liberating Simferopol and members of the Sokol underground group were buried in a communal grave in the square; in June 1944 a medium flamethrower tank OT-34 (hull number 201) was installed there. The liberators' remains were later reburied at a military cemetery, while the tank still stands at the site in honour of the city's liberators.
At the memorial to Crimean partisans and underground fighters of the Great Patriotic War, officers remembered that by November 1941 twenty-nine partisan detachments totalling about 3,500 people had been formed on the peninsula, only one in three of them with military training. As Soviet forces withdrew, soldiers and commanders cut off in the German rear joined the partisans, covering the retreat toward Sevastopol — mainly from the 48th Separate Cavalry Division, the 184th Rifle Division and marine infantry units.
In 2023, on the Day of Memory and Glory of Crimean partisans and underground fighters, a bust was unveiled in Simferopol to partisan hero, Crimean resistance participant, honorary citizen of Simferopol and Major General Fyodor Fedorenko, the first military commandant of liberated Simferopol.
At the memorial to the liberators of Simferopol, staff recalled that on 13 April 1944 Moscow saluted the troops who freed the city with twenty artillery salvoes from 224 guns. Eleven units and formations that took part in the liberation were awarded the honorary title Simferopol.