The soldier faces west, toward the Valley of Glory, where the fiercest fighting of the Arctic Campaign occurred when the German invaders were turned back from the approaches to Murmansk at the Zapadnaya Litsa River in July 1941.

Next to the statue is a stele of polished granite with this inscription: Defenders of the Arctic – the warriors of the 14th Army, 19th Army, Red Banner Northern Fleet, 7th Air Force, 82nd and 100th Border Troops, and Partisan groups "Soviet Moormen", "Bolshevik Arctic", "Polarmen", "Stalinists", and "Bolshevist".

)[1] Built into the foot of the monument are two capsules, one with seawater from the gravesite of the patrol craft Tuman which sank while fighting off three German destroyers,[A] one with earth from the Valley of Glory and from the Verman River front.

At the opening ceremony, a column proceeded to the site, with two armored personnel carriers at the head and at the rear a gun carriage with the remains of an Unknown Soldier and the two capsules, one of water and one of earth.

Standing on the roads in Kola Bay, the cruiser Murmansk saluted with 30 volleys in honor of the holiday and the opening of the memorial.