28/7 Tass 296
KALININGRAD, July 28 (Itar-Tass) — A total of thirteen ammunitions dating back to the times of World War II have been found at the site of an international festival of singers/songwriters near the town of Primorsk in Russia’s Baltic exclave region of Kaliningrad.
The Baltic Ukhana festival is due to open Friday, July 29, on the Baltic Sea coast.
“The municipal administration decided to examine the festival floor so as to find out if it might contain dangerous objects hidden in the soil since the times of combat operations against Nazi troops,” Alexander Drenkhan, a spokesman for the Baltiysky district authorities told Itar-Tass.
The operation he referred to unfolded on the Baltic Sea coast during the East Prussia offensive of Soviet troops at the beginning of 1945.
Demolition experts from the specialized enterprise Forpost Baltik Plus, which carries out mine-clearing works, tracked down thirteen different ammunitions on an area of less than 1.5 hectares. The list of their finds includes two powerful projectiles of the 280 mm and 150 mm caliber, eight artillery shells and three mortar bombs.
All the dangerous finds have been evacuated to a firing range for demolition.
The Baltic Ukhana annual international festival of singers/songwriters brings together up to 500 performers from Russia, Lithuania, Poland, and Belarus and about 2,500 spectators.