On this day in 1989 the process of withdrawing Soviet military forces from Afghanistan was officially declared complete.

The Soviets had held Afghanistan since 1979 (towards the end of that year they conducted an invasion of Afghanistan, killed the Afghan president and captured his palace).

At the peak of the occupation, the USSR deployed over 100,000 soldiers to Afghanistan. Seeing the situation is untenable, the Soviets started withdrawing from the country in May 1988. The complete withdrawal of around 100,000 people took around 10 months.

On this day in 1989 Soviet general Boris Gromov became the last to symbolically cross the bridge on the border between Afghanistan and the USSR. Specifically, the bridge is located on the Amu-Darya river, today the border between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan (the latter was once part of the USSR).

Over 14,400 Soviet soldiers died during the occupation of Afghanistan, and over 53,000 were wounded.