Pechenga [key], Finnish Petsamo, town, NW European Russia, an ice-free port at the head of Pechenga Fjord on the Barents Sea and near the Norwegian border. It is also the northern terminus of an Arctic highway. Pechenga serves as the base for a fishing (notably herring) fleet. Located in an important nickel- and copper-mining region, the town has an ore refinery. Pechenga was known in the 16th cent. as a Muscovite foreign trading port. Ceded by Russia to Finland in 1920, it was a supply base in the German-Finnish drive on Murmansk during World War II. The town was seized by Soviet forces and transferred to the USSR in the Russo-Finnish armistice of 1944.
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