Who actually sat next to Putin on “Victory Day”.

The Russian leadership on Tuesday commemorated the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany with a large military parade. Russian President Vladimir Putin was also present and took a seat in the VIP tribune between two veterans.

Judging by the occasion, one might think that the veterans played their part in the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazism. However, that does not seem to be the case, as the opposition medium “Agentstwo” has investigated.

Veteran fought Bandera supporters

Accordingly, 98-year-old Yuri Dwoikin sat on Putin’s right. In the footage from Russian state television, Dwoikin wears a flat cap. Although he fought in World War II, he was well behind the front lines: after training as a sniper, Dwoikin was sent to Western Ukraine by the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, “Agentstwo” reports.

In the Lviv area, Dvoikin’s unit should hunt down supporters of Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera, who still has a large following in Ukraine today. “Within two days, we shot more than 5,000 people and liberated forests and farms from Ukrainian nationalists,” Dvoikin recalled in an interview with the veteran network “Immortal Regiment”.

Another sitting neighbor put down the Prague Spring

Putin’s seat neighbor on the left was not at all involved in the fighting in World War II – the man named Gennady Zaitsev was only born in 1934 and was only eleven years old when the war ended, “Agentstwo” writes.

In 1959, Zaitsev started his service in the secret service of the Soviet KGB, reports the Russian medium “Rodina”. In an interview with “Rodina”, Saitsev tells how he was involved in the invasion of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Their goal: to suppress the Prague Spring. Saitsev is said to have commanded the unit that captured the Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior in Prague during the Soviet invasion.