Over the next week, Colonel Hjalmar Siilasvuo's outnumbered 9th Division stopped and decisively defeated the Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi road.

The situation was getting worse, and on 20 December the commander of the 163rd Division, Andrei Zelentsov, asked permission to retreat from Suomussalmi.

Zelentsov's concerns were not understood at Red Army headquarters, as the entire 44th Division was about to move along the Raate Road.

By the following morning, the Finnish troops held strong blocking positions reinforced with mines at several points in the midst of the Soviet column.

During January 6, heavy fighting occurred all along the Raate Road as the Finns continued to break up the enemy forces into smaller pieces.

The Soviets attempted to overrun Finnish roadblocks with armor, losing numerous tanks in frontal attacks, but were unsuccessful.

Other remnants of the 44th Division were forced to withdraw from the area, fleeing through the northern forests pursued by the Finns, finally reaching the border in several small groups.

The Soviets challenged the number of casualties published in the Western world immediately in January and claimed to have lost no more than 900 men, mostly from frostbite, while inflicting an estimated 2,000 Finn fatalities.

[16] The Finns quickly buried the Soviet dead as the weather warmed during the early spring to reduce the risk of epidemics.

[18] According to the Russian historian Yuri Kilin, the Stavka set up a research commission in January 1940 to investigate the number of casualties.

The Soviet commander, Vinogradov, and two of his chief officers, Volkov and Pahomov, retreated in the middle of crucial battles.

As they reached the Soviet lines four days later they were court-martialed, found guilty and sentenced to death; the executions were carried out immediately.

[20] A Ukrainian veteran of the Raate Road, Sergeant Pyotr Andrevich Morozov, was interviewed in 1991 by the Finnish non-fiction writer Leo Karttimo.

[21] According to Morozov the Finns returned prisoners of war, but none of them managed to get back to their homes as the Soviet secret service NKVD executed them all in summer 1940.