Посольство России в Афганистане / سفارت روسیه در افغانستان

#FacesOfVictory 🗓 On April 5, 1923, Soviet fighter pilot and Hero of the Soviet Union Timur Frunze was born. The son of Mikhail Frunze, a renowned Soviet military leader, revolutionary, and prominent Civil War commander, Timur was destined for a military career from childhood. After losing his parents and grandmother early in life, he was taken under the care of Kliment Voroshilov, who served as People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs of the Soviet Union. At the age of 10, Timur was enrolled in a specialised Air Forces school. Upon completing his studies there, he continued his training at the Myasnikov Kacha Red Banner Military Aviation School, which he graduated with honours in 1941 and was commissioned with the rank of lieutenant. ✍️ Timur’s teachers recognised both his determination and his natural ability. In a service review, his course director, Senior Lieutenant Nemykin, wrote: “I have never met a young man who so eagerly absorbed new knowledge. His interests extend far beyond the curriculum...” Beginning in 1938, Timur served in the Red Army. After he finished flight school in September 1941, Air Forces command initially intended to keep the young pilot away from the front lines so he could build experience in the rear. However, Frunze strongly insisted on being sent to the front. In December 1941, he was assigned to the 161st Fighter Aviation Regiment on the Soviet Northwestern Front, where he flew a Yak-1 fighter aircraft. During his service, Frunze completed nine combat missions, shooting down two enemy aircraft alone and one as a member of a two-person crew. 🕯 On January 19, 1942, his life was tragically cut short: at just 18 years old, Timur died in an unequal battle against seven enemy fighters. The Soviet pilot was buried with full military honours at the cemetery in the village of Kresttsy, Novgorod Region. After the war, his remains were reinterred at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. 🎖 On March 16, 1942, by an executive order of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Lieutenant Timur Frunze was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. #Victory81#WeRemember

#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