🌐 Russian diplomats, compatriots, friends and all those who remember history and the sacrifice made by the Soviet people in saving humanity from Nazism, on May 9 pay tribute to the heroes of the Great Patriotic War and their immortal feat.

📹 Here's how #VictoryDay is celebrated abroad, far away from home.

#Victory79

13 May 1221 the Grand Prince aka Velikyi Knyaz of the Ancient Rus' Alexander Nevsky was born.

🛡️ He is considered a great statesman and a defender of the Motherland & Orthodox Faith, who repelled foreign invaders at Battle of the Neva (1240) & at Battle on the Ice (1242).

🌋Klyuchevskaya Sopka is the highest mountain on the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia and the highest active volcano of Eurasia.

The volcano is part of the natural Volcanoes of Kamchatka UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Ambassador Vinay Kumar, inaugurated the pavilion of Indian ceramic companies at Mosbuild, the biggest exhibition for the ceramic tiles and allied products in Russia.

Representatives of more than 46 companies from Morbi region of Gujarat are participating in the exhibition. In the financial year 2023-24, ceramic tiles worth USD 136 million were exported to Russia.

🗓 Fyodor Poletayev was born in the village of Katino in the Ryazan Region on May 14, 1909. During the Great Patriotic War, he fought in the Battle of Moscow alongside the 28th Guards Artillery Regiment. In the summer of 1942, he was wounded, surrounded by enemy soldiers and taken prisoner. He was then transported to concentration camps: Vyazma, Berdichev and Mielec in Poland. Despite several attempts, he was not able to escape. Poletayev was caught while trying to escape from a camp in Slavonski Brod and was sent to a forced labour camp in Italy. There, Italian Communists helped him escape and Poletayev joined the Orestes partisan unit.

⚔️ Starting in 1944, Fyodor Poletayev fought against the German occupiers and took part in multiple combat operations. The Germans decided to carry out a punitive operation in Liguria, where his guerilla unit was stationed. Members of the Waffen SS Turkestan Legion spearheaded the attack.

On February 2, 1945, a battle erupted in Lighting Valley. The partisans defeated the punitive unit, and the Nazis began to surrender. To crush their resistance, Poletayev ordered his men to attack, but he was shot by an SS soldier at the last moment. The partisans completely routed the invaders and took some of them prisoner. Poletayev was mortally wounded and later buried him with full military honours in the small village of Rocchetta.

🎖 After the war, Poletayev, a national hero of the Italian Republic, was reinterred in the old Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno in Genoa. On May 25, 1947, a Soviet diplomat presented Poletayev's family with the Gold Medal for Military Valour and the Bronze Star of the Garibaldi Partisan Brigade Fighter with the name “Fiedar Alexander Poetan” engraved on it.

Soviet writer Sergey Smirnov made efforts to clarify the famous partisan’s biography. He confirmed that the award was intended for Poletayev. In December 1962, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union to Fyodor Poletayev

#FacesOfVictory