#FacesOfVictory
🌟#Victory80: During the battle of Berlin on April 30, 1945, Red Army soldier Nikolay Masalov rescued a German little girl — by risking his life, Masalov took the kid to safety from the zone that was under heavy Nazi fire.
This brave and honourable deed by Nikolay Masalov was immortalised in the worldwide famous 'Liberator Soldier' monument in Berlin. It was unveiled back in 1949 in Treptower Park, where over 7,000 Red Army soldiers, who perished in the Battle of Berlin, are entombed. The centrepiece of that famous memorial complex, the figure of a Soviet soldier holding a German girl, has become a symbol of the noble mission of the Red Army, which saved Europe from the 'Nazi plague', and of the Great Victory of the Soviet people over Nazi Germany.
***
In the morning of April 30, 1945, before the Red Army attack on a Nazi defence outpost, the Tempelhof Airport, Nikolay Masalov heard a child crying. Marshall Vassily Chuikov recalled in his memoirs: “The kid’s voice sounded as if it came from under the ground, calling out again and again a word that is understandable to everyone, ‘Mutter, Mutter’.”
Nikolay Masalov hurried to rescue the kid. Risking his life, the soldier crawled across a bridge over the Landwehr Canal, which was under enemy fire, and saved a three-year-old girl. He found her near the body of her mother, who had been killed by the Nazis during the shelling.
Masalov took the girl and moved back to the Soviet positions, which the enemy kept under heavy machine-gun fire. In return, the Soviet forces had to opened artillery fire on the Nazi positions.
“Thousands of artillery guns and mortars opened fire at the enemy. Thousands of shells and mines covered the return of the Soviet soldier rescuing a three-year-old German girl from the death zone,”
— this is how Marshall Chuikov wrote later in his memoirs about Masalov’s heroic feat.
People all around the world knew about Nikolay Masalov, a humble Soviet soldier and a legendary #WWII veteran. But he never considered his heroism as something extraordinary. He did not like speaking about it, and when he did, he did not talk much:
💬 “I am a Russian soldier. Anyone would do the same in my place.”
#WeAreProud
#Victory80
🌟 On April 30, 1945, just 10 days before Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered, Red Army soldiers Rakhimzhan Koshkarbayev and Grigory Bulatov raised the first Red Banner on the facade of the Reichstag during the Battle of Berlin.
***
On April 28, fierce fighting for the Reichstag was in full swing, which the Nazis had turned into a fully-fledged stronghold defended by more than a thousand soldiers, including SS troops, supported by artillery and armor.
The distance between the former Himmler's house and the Reichstag was less than 500 metres.
It took Bulatov and Koshkarbayev 7 hours to cover the distance under constant heavy fire — they carried a makeshift flagpole with a simple scarlet cloth with them.
Later after the battle, Koshkarbayev recalled:
“The artillery fire began, and with the very first fires, Bulatov and I dashed toward the Reichstag. I lifted him up by the legs, and together, on the second floor, we raised our flag.”
According to the 150th Division's combat log, at 14:25 Bulatov and Koshkarbayev "crawled to the central part of the building and placed a red flag on the steps of the main entrance".
It was the first of the banners the liberators raised over the Reichstag.
🎖 Rakhimzhan Koshkarbayev and Grigory Bulatov were awarded the Order of the Red Banner for the courage and heroism during the assualt on the Reichstag. Monuments to Koshkarbayev have been erected in his home region of Akmola in Kazakhstan and in the republic's capital, Astana, and to Bulatov in Kirov.
#WeAreProud
#Victory80
🌟 In the early hours of May 1, 1945, the #VictoryBanner was raised atop the Reichstag during the Battle of Berlin. It became a symbol of the triumph of the Soviet Union & its peoples in the fight against Nazism.
The legendary Red Banner №5, which became the famous Victory Banner, was raised over the dome of the defeated Reichstag by the 756th Rifle Regiment’s scouts, Sergeant Mikhail Yegorov & Junior Sergeant Meliton Kantariya.
Before the assault, a decision was made for a group of Soviet soldiers to hoist the flag over the Reichstag, which would embody the final collapse of Nazism.
🚩 A total of 9 makeshift banners were promptly made, designed after the state flag of the USSR. Ultimately, a battle flag of the 150th Order of Kutuzov 2nd Class Idritsa Rifle Division, 79th Rifle Corps, 3rd Striking Army of the 1st Belarusian Front, became the Victory Banner.
On April 29, the fierce fighting for the Reichstag began, which the Nazis had turned into a fortified point of resistance. It was defended by over a thousand men, including SS troops supported by artillery and armor.
The Reichstag was of special symbolic importance to the Nazi Germany. The Germans considered it their main fortress during the final days of #WWII. The Soviet command was sure that the storming of that citadel, which was a symbol of German Nazism, would especially affect morale of the enemy and eventually completely demoralize the fascists.
⚔️ On April30at 1:50 p.m., a Red Army unit broke into the Reichstag through breaches in the walls, with a fierce close combat unleashing. The Nazis took advantage of effectively advancing inside the building they new well, throwing grenades at Soviet soldiers & firing back with machine-guns: they basically had nothing to lose.
⏱️ At 2.25 p.m., Red Army soldiers Bulatov and Koshkarbayevplaced a makeshift red flag to the column of the main entrance to the Reichstag — it was the first of the banners the liberators raised over the Reichstag.
⏱️ At 10.30 p.m., staff sergeants Gizet Zagitov, Alexander Lisimenko & Alexey Bobrov as well as Sergeant Mikhail Minin supported by Captain Neustroyev’s battalion were the 1st to hoist a red banner on the roof of the Reichstag atop of the Goddess of Victory sculpture. The 3rd red banner was raised on the western facade of the roof by the scouts of the 674th Regiment led by Lieutenant Sorokin.
⏱️ In the early hours of May 1, finally, the Red Banner №5 was raised over the dome of the captured Reichstag by the 756th Rifle Regiment’s scouts, Sergeant Mikhail Yegorov & Junior Sergeant Meliton Kantariya, led by deputy battalion commander Lieutenant Alexey Berest, covered by riflemen from Ilya Syanov's squad. That flag ultimately became the Victory Banner.
📃 By a Presidential Executive Order of April 15, 1996, the Red Banner hoisted atop of the Reichstag by Yegorov & Kantariya was declared the symbol of the Soviet people’s Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.
#WeAreProud
#FacesOfVictory
He Shielded his Homeland with himself…
🏅 On February 27, 1943,Alexander Matrosov performed an immortal feat, which became known and will always be remembered as the Matrosov’s feat – he sacrificed his life for the Motherland and his comrades-in-arms.
Sasha Matrosov lost his parents early and grew up in orphanages. Even in his youth, he gained serious work experience and contributed to the industrialization of the Soviet Union.
From the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Matrosov was eager to join the front. He was drafted into military service in the fall of 1942 and, after a short combat training, was sent to the front lines as an automatic rifleman in the 2nd Separate Rifle Battalion of the 91st Separate Rifle Siberian Volunteer Brigade. Around the same time, Matrosov, a Red Army recruit, was accepted into the Komsomol (Young Communist League).
On February 27, 1943, Matrosov’s battalion was ordered to attack an enemy stronghold near the village of Chernushki. As the Red Army soldiers crossed a wooded area and reached a clearing, they came under massive fire, with three enemy machine guns targeting them from their dug-in firing positions and blocking approaches to the village.
One of the firing points was suppressed by an assault group of riflemen and anti-tank gunners. Another group took out the second pillbox. However, the third machine-gun nest remained active.
It was then that privates Pyotr Ogurtsov and Alexander Matrosov started crawling towards the remaining gun emplacement. Soon, Ogurtsov was badly wounded, leaving Matrosov alone on his approach to the gun port.
🌟 He threw two grenades into the firing slit, temporarily silencing the machine gun. But as soon as the fighters stood up to continue their assault, the machine gunner started firing again. So the 19-year-old hero rose to his feet and rushed to the gun port to block the firing slit with his ownbody. The precious seconds he bought with his life allowed his comrades to advance and destroy the enemy position.
🎖 By decree of the USSR Supreme Council Presidium, Alexander Matrosov was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for “exemplary performance of his combat missions on the front against the German invaders and for the courage and heroism displayed.”
☝️ Matrosov’s feat became a universal symbol of courage and military valour, fearlessness and love for his Motherland. His sacrifice continues to inspire songs, poems, and films, becoming an inseparable part of Russia’s cultural code. Notably, the expression “to throw oneself against the firing slit” entered the Russian language as a direct reference to Matrosov’s immortal act.
🗓 86 years ago — on August 23, 1939 — the Soviet Union and Germany signed the Non-Aggression Treaty in Moscow.
This document was an important achievement of the Soviet diplomacy ahead of #WWII: the USSR was able to buy time to better prepare to repel Hitler’s impending attack, which had been seen as inevitable due to the failed policy of “appeasement” by Western European states and their refusal to forge a collective security agreement with our nation against Nazism.
Signing the non-aggression treaty with Germany was a difficult but necessary decision by the Soviet leadership, driven by national security considerations and the urgent need to deter Nazi aggression in the east.
***
In the 1930s, twenty years after the end of World War I, the threat of a new large-scale armed conflict in Europe began to grow. A key factor for this was the crisis of the Versailles system of international relations, designed by Britain and France, which paved the way for rising revanchist sentiments in the states it had humiliated — Germany and Italy.
With the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany, the threat of a new war in Europe became real. Hitler’s misanthropic ideology was rooted in the notorious doctrine of “racial superiority.” The Nazis used this doctrine to justify Germany’s pursuit of world domination. In this way, an absolute evil emerged at the heart of Europe, endangering the peace and freedom of entire nations.
By the mid-1930s, it became evident that another German aggression in Europe was inevitable — it was merely a matter of time. In an effort to counter the rising threat of German revanchism, the Soviet Union suggested the creation of a collective security system in Europe, founded on anti-fascist principles, to unite efforts and deliver a joint response to the common threat.
Yet in Paris and London, where anti-Soviet sentiments ran deep, the idea of cooperation with Moscow was rejected as such. Instead, Western powers sought to strike a deal with Germany, aiming to pacify the Germans through unilateral concessions. The political establishments of the West failed to grasp the existential threat posed by Nazi ideology, cynically believing that Hitler’s aggression could be redirected eastward.
The “appeasement” tactics whetted the aggressor’s appetite. In March 1938, with the connivance of Paris and London, Hitler carried out the Anschluss of Austria. In September, following the criminal “Munich conspiracy” and with the approval of the UK and France, he cynically dismembered the sovereign state of Czechoslovakia. Warsaw, which was interested in getting part of Czechoslovakia’s territory for itself, prohibited flights of Soviet aircraft to render aid to Czechoslovak army. Already a de facto accomplice of Hitler, Poland had supported every single foreign policy move of the Reich.
❗️A new war in Europe became inevitable.
Thus, “appeasement” policy ended in total failure. Attempting to sate the Nazis’ insatiable ambitions, the Western powers failed to restrain the aggressor or thwart its criminal plans.
The Soviet Union remained the only European power still striving to organise collective resistance against Nazi Germany. In the spring and summer of 1939, the USSR initiated consultations with France and Britain in Moscow. However, the negotiation process failed to yield practical results — the Western powers that until the last moment hoped for a compromise with Hitler, engaged in secret talks with Germany behind the Soviet Union’s back.
👉The Soviet diplomacy ran out of chances to build a collective security system in Europe. Moscow also had to take into account the Japanese factor — the hostilities on the Khalkhin-Gol that began in May 1939. The Soviet leadership could not afford a war on two fronts.
By August 1939, several European nations had concluded non-aggression pacts with Hitler. The Soviet Union was the last major power to follow the suit. As a result, our country gained valuable time to prepare for a clash with the world’s most powerful army at that time.
📖Learn more in our in-depthhistorical feature.
⭐️ Dear friends!
From the bottom of our hearts we congratulate you on the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory!
We will never forget our heroes and at what price this long-awaited victory was given.
Peaceful skies and prosperity to you and your loved ones!
#Victory80
🇦🇲🇧🇾🇰🇿🇰🇬🇷🇺🇷🇸🇹🇯🇹🇲🇺🇿
🗓️80 years ago, Nazism was defeated in the Second World War. We commemorate and honour this sacred date
❗️Attempts to revise or distort the outcome of WWII, to rehabilitate and glorify the Nazis and their accomplices, as well as to downplay the role of the peoples of the Soviet Union and participants in the liberation movements of European countries in defeat of Nazism are categorically unacceptable.
❌ Efforts to rehabilitate and glorify the Nazis and their accomplices and to deny the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by them are unacceptable.
🔻 We strongly condemn the destruction and desecration of monuments and burial sites of liberators of any nationality.
📢 We call upon all countries and peoples to honor the memory of those who forged in the Second World War, not to forget the lessons of the history.
📄Read the Statement in full
#Victory80
🎥Belarus: A Land Unbroken — an RT Doc Film.
Synopsis: During the Great Patriotic War Soviet Belarus, a part of the USSR, was under Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1944.
The fraternal Belarusian people, among the first to confront the Nazi invasion in June 1941, endured immense suffering and hardship. After seizing the territory of the Byelorussian SSR, the Hitlerites imposed a brutal and oppressive occupation regime.
🕯 The Nazis killed people of all nationalities through punitive operations, ghettos, and encircling concentration camps. During the Great Patriotic War, one in every three people in Belarus died.
But the citizens of the Soviet Union endured all the horrors of war and never lost faith in Victory. The resistance movement in Belarus was one of the largest. Even children and teenagers joined the partisans to fight for their homeland.
The occupation ended in 1944, when the Red Army, together with the partisans, launched Operation Bagration — the largest military operation in history. As a result of their combined efforts, Belarus was liberated.
📺 In this documentary, the filmmakers spoke to representatives from the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Belarus, leading experts, frontline veterans, home front workers, and descendants of the heroes who defended the Brest Fortress.
Historians featured in the film shed light on the Nazi war crimes committed on Belarusian soil and highlight the courage and sacrifice of the Soviet soldiers who liberated Belarus from occupation.
#Victory80
🎙Address by President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to participants of the 13th International Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues(May 28, 2025)
💬 Vladimir Putin: I am pleased to welcome you to Moscow for the 13th International Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues.
Over the past nearly fifteen years, your Forum has convincingly affirmed its significant status and authority. I know that in these days, participants of the Meeting — representatives of delegations from many states — can expect a substantial programme, with the main discussion dedicated to the prospects of establishing a new global security architecture.
☝️ As for Russia, our approaches remain principled and unchanged. I have said it before and will reiterate: we are convinced that the new security architecture must be equal and indivisible — that is, all states must receive firm guarantees of their own security, but not at the expense of the security and interests of other countries.
It is vital to make our continent a space of peace and stability, an example of sustainable economic, social, and cultural development. We believe that the foundation for creating such a universal security system could be the existing and well-established multilateral cooperation formats, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and others.
Your current meeting is widely attended by states of the Global South and East. It is they, in essence, who form the global majority, seek to influence regional and international processes more actively, and uphold the principle of sovereign equality and the right to their own development model.
Undoubtedly, in building joint efforts, it is necessary to rely on positive historical experience, on the lessons of the past. This year marks the 80th Anniversary of the end of #WWII, which fundamentally influenced the development of the international community.
The experience of uniting states in the fight against evil, against Nazism and militarism, the understanding of the colossal price humanity paid for peace and freedom, for the right of peoples to choose their own path of development, laid the foundations of the post-war world order and led to the creation of the UN — a universal, legitimate organisation based on the principles of international law, which has helped overcome many geopolitical challenges.
Today, it is especially important to preserve the truth about the events of those years, to counter attempts to rewrite history, to cast doubt on the decisive contribution of the peoples of the Soviet Union to the Victory over Hitler’s Germany, and to glorify Nazi criminals and their accomplices.
Just recently, on May 9, we solemnly marked the Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. The celebrations in Moscow became yet another symbol of unity around the ideals of the Great Victory, demonstrating once again the commitment of our friends and partners to shaping a safer world, to constructive cooperation, and to jointly addressing global challenges.
I am convinced that this latest meeting of high representatives overseeing security issues will contribute to the development of new important approaches to strengthening international peace and stability and will help advance dialogue for the benefit of all countries and peoples.
I wish you success.
✍️ Russia's Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on the rise of Neo-Nazi sentiments in Europe in the article for Izvestia newspaper(August 28, 2025)
Selective Memory
Read in full(telegraph)
We have been discussing the rise of neo-Nazi manifestations in Europe for many years now. First, they vilify the Red Army, and then they forget about the Holocaust.
The other day, in a letter to President Emmanuel Macron, US Ambassador to France Charles Kushner (father of US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law), expressed “deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France” and accused the government of “the lack of sufficient action to confront it.” He also claimed that nearly half of French youth lack even basic knowledge about the Holocaust. <...>
The Élysée Palace’s reaction was ... psychotic. The Ambassador was summoned to the French Foreign Ministry, where he was reminded of the “duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of another country.” In addition, he was told that his revelations “fall short of the quality of the transatlantic partnership … and of the trust that must prevail between allies.”
Let’s turn to the main point. The situation with the collective memory of the Holocaust in the EU is a direct consequence of a purposeful policy of fragmenting the history of #WWII. Westerners tried to consider the tragedy of the Jewish people without taking into account the total genocide carried out by the Third Reich in Eastern Europe as part of freeing up the “living space” for the “Übermensch” race. Then, the history of the liberation by the Red Army was systematically vilified.
This was most clearly seen in the transformation of the commemorative events in Europe on the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. As you may recall, it was established by the UN General Assembly in 2005 and is observed annually on January 27, the day of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz by the Red Army. <...>
The UN Secretariat does not invite Soviet veterans on this day, either. Only the Russian mission does this. It organises commemorative events at the UN every year on January 27, where the main heroes are the participants of the Great Patriotic War and former concentration camp inmates. <...>
Why did (and does) the West treat them, the heroes, like this? 👉 It’s just because their presence was not supposed to remind the high guests of the historical truth.
The Eurocrats and Western European capitals, including Paris, London, and Berlin, unless they openly approved, did not react in any way to the revanchism of the “Young Europeans,” who declared war on the Soviet memorial legacy and legalised the rehabilitation of the blood-stained Holocaust executioners. <...>
Letters, notes, and articles of outrage in fighting this evil of denial and fragmentation of history will not help. It’s time to learn that without the unconditional recognition of the liberating role of the Red Army, which stopped the genocide carried out by Nazi executioners and their henchmen, the memory of the victims of the Holocaust is also doomed to be forced out of the European public mind.
Is there any guarantee that at some point an influential politician will not show up somewhere abroad and say about the Holocaust, what Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan had to say regarding the genocide of the Armenian people:
“The international recognition of the Armenian genocide is not among our foreign policy priorities.”
☝️ Such guarantees do not exist. But there is one unconditional guarantee: the Holocaust victims will not be forgotten, and the memory of the heroes who destroyed Nazism and saved the survivors will be preserved.
We will do everything to ensure that this truth is never forgotten.
🗓 86 years ago — on August 23, 1939 — the Soviet Union and Germany signed the Non-Aggression Treaty in Moscow.
This document was an important achievement of the Soviet diplomacy ahead of #WWII: the USSR was able to buy time to better prepare to repel Hitler’s impending attack, which had been seen as inevitable due to the failed policy of “appeasement” by Western European states and their refusal to forge a collective security agreement with our nation against Nazism.
Signing the non-aggression treaty with Germany was a difficult but necessary decision by the Soviet leadership, driven by national security considerations and the urgent need to deter Nazi aggression in the east.
***
In the 1930s, twenty years after the end of World War I, the threat of a new large-scale armed conflict in Europe began to grow. A key factor for this was the crisis of the Versailles system of international relations, designed by Britain and France, which paved the way for rising revanchist sentiments in the states it had humiliated — Germany and Italy.
With the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany, the threat of a new war in Europe became real. Hitler’s misanthropic ideology was rooted in the notorious doctrine of “racial superiority.” The Nazis used this doctrine to justify Germany’s pursuit of world domination. In this way, an absolute evil emerged at the heart of Europe, endangering the peace and freedom of entire nations.
By the mid-1930s, it became evident that another German aggression in Europe was inevitable — it was merely a matter of time. In an effort to counter the rising threat of German revanchism, the Soviet Union suggested the creation of a collective security system in Europe, founded on anti-fascist principles, to unite efforts and deliver a joint response to the common threat.
Yet in Paris and London, where anti-Soviet sentiments ran deep, the idea of cooperation with Moscow was rejected as such. Instead, Western powers sought to strike a deal with Germany, aiming to pacify the Germans through unilateral concessions. The political establishments of the West failed to grasp the existential threat posed by Nazi ideology, cynically believing that Hitler’s aggression could be redirected eastward.
The “appeasement” tactics whetted the aggressor’s appetite. In March 1938, with the connivance of Paris and London, Hitler carried out the Anschluss of Austria. In September, following the criminal “Munich conspiracy” and with the approval of the UK and France, he cynically dismembered the sovereign state of Czechoslovakia. Warsaw, which was interested in getting part of Czechoslovakia’s territory for itself, prohibited flights of Soviet aircraft to render aid to Czechoslovak army. Already a de facto accomplice of Hitler, Poland had supported every single foreign policy move of the Reich.
❗️A new war in Europe became inevitable.
Thus, “appeasement” policy ended in total failure. Attempting to sate the Nazis’ insatiable ambitions, the Western powers failed to restrain the aggressor or thwart its criminal plans.
The Soviet Union remained the only European power still striving to organise collective resistance against Nazi Germany. In the spring and summer of 1939, the USSR initiated consultations with France and Britain in Moscow. However, the negotiation process failed to yield practical results — the Western powers that until the last moment hoped for a compromise with Hitler, engaged in secret talks with Germany behind the Soviet Union’s back.
👉The Soviet diplomacy ran out of chances to build a collective security system in Europe. Moscow also had to take into account the Japanese factor — the hostilities on the Khalkhin-Gol that began in May 1939. The Soviet leadership could not afford a war on two fronts.
By August 1939, several European nations had concluded non-aggression pacts with Hitler. The Soviet Union was the last major power to follow the suit. As a result, our country gained valuable time to prepare for a clash with the world’s most powerful army at that time.
📖Learn more in our in-depthhistorical feature.