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JR 200 (Jalkaväkirykmentti 200 - Infantry regiment 200), also known as the 'Finnish boys', was a unit of the Finnish army that mainly consisted of Estonian volunteers. As Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 and subsequently by Nazi Germany in 1941, many Estonian men forcibly conscripted by Germany chose to flee to democratic Finland to fight in the ranks of the Finnish army against the Soviet Union, as they held no sympathy for the powers that had occupied Estonia, while the Finns defended their independence, which Estonia had lost in 1940. While many fled to and fought in Finland earlier, the regiment was formally created by Field Marshal Mannerheim in 1944 and consisted of 2 infantry battalions, a mortar and an anti-tank company. As Finland approached a truce with the USSR, many of the JR 200 went on to fight the Soviets in Estonia in 1944 as Nazi Germany retreated and Estonia briefly declared independence again, only to lose it and only regain it in 1991. Some continued to fight the Soviets as partisans, also known as the Forest Brothers, until the 1950s, hoping for a Western offensive against the Soviet Union to begin, while others died or fled across the Baltic Sea. As Finland came under Soviet influence, many of those who remained in Finland were deported to the Gulag. JR 200 remains as a memory of Finnish and Estonian values against their common foes, where one country lost it's independence and the other retained it, as illustrated in their motto: "For Finnish independence and Estonian honor". Estonia regained it's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, 46 years after the end of WW2. The first country to recognize Estonia's renewed independence from Soviet occupation in 1991 was Iceland. As a nod to history, some Finns and Estonians participate as volunteers in the Ukrainian army today.
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