One of the most bizarre wars between Sweden (& Finland) and Russia is so called the War of Gustaf the Third, which he started  without any obvious external reason and no major battles of infantry or artillery took place. Nevertheless, thousands of soldiers died on the both sides – not mainly because of weapons in military operations but because of epidemic diseases. Finally, this war was ended by the peace of Värälä  (a village in Elimäki, Finland) on the 14 August of 1790 without any change in the borders of the two realms. Despite of all these, both Swedish and Finnish historiography keep on considering that the king of Sweden managed to beat his cousin, the Empress of Russia.

The paper will attempt to find out whether there was any winner in this unfortunate war, during which there was a mutiny of the top ranking Swedish officers against their king, Gustaf III, and according to Finnish historiography, the key achievement of the mutiny was launching the idea on Finnish independence. This idea has been considered more significant than the victory of Sweden in the biggest naval battle (the 2^nd Battle of Svensksund, in Finnish: Ruotsinsalmi and in Russian: Rochensalm) in the Baltic Sea, where the Swedish navy has been considered to gain its most outstanding victory.  The key question in this paper is what has been regarded as key events and results on the Russian side in this peculiar war.