Approaching Leningrad from the south, it was impossible to bypass the Pulkovo Heights, and from them the city was fully visible. Further only cabbage fields and Moskovsky prospect. The new front commander, General Zhukov, believed that the key to Leningrad was here. On September 13, when the advanced units of the 58th German Infantry Regiment broke into Finnskoe Koyrovo, Krasnogvardeysk had already fallen, the German infantry was advancing in the direction of Pushkin. The capture of the Pulkovo Heights would mean the impossibility of holding the northern capital of Russia. Mining of bridges began in the city, on the outskirts every 50-100 meters they began to dig artillery pieces into the ground - only about seven dozen, and heavy flamethrowers to fight tanks.
“The commander promised to shoot me if the sixth division was not on the Okruzhnaya road by morning,” Ivan Bychevsky, head of the Leningrad Front Engineering Directorate, told Ivan Fedyuninsky, the new commander of the 42nd Army that defended Leningrad from the south.
-Do not be angry, engineer! - the commander smiled broadly, who knew, it seems, the character of Zhukov. - You're still lucky. Georgy Konstantinovich promised to hang me and a member of the Military Council of the army for the same thing. "
To liberate Finnish Koyrovo and Sosnovka, the last front-line reserve, the 10th Infantry Division, was thrown into battle. By the evening of September 14, soldiers of the 5th division of the people's militia broke into Sosnovka and Finnish Koyrovo. Border guards from the 21st Infantry Division stood to death at Ligovo. The enemy had nothing to oppose their heroism. Until September 23, the Germans continued their counterattacks, but they did not succeed in establishing themselves on the Pulkovo Heights. The front on the approaches to Leningrad has stabilized.
And Finnish Koyrovo was finally released only on January 15, 1944.