Russian President Vladimir Putin sat next to two NKVD and KGB veterans at the victory parade on Red Square on May 9, but neither of them fought against Nazi troops.. This is reported by the Russian opposition publication "

On the right hand of Putin sat 98-year-old Yuri Dvoikin (in a cap). In 1942, he volunteered for the army, but never got to the front.. After graduating from the school of snipers, in 1944, as part of the NKVD, he was sent to Ukraine, in particular to the Lviv region " That is, he was part of the units that acted against the OUN-UPA.

“We knew little about Bandera at that time. They started hunting: within two days they shot more than 5,000 people, they felt like masters in Lvov, in Ukraine. - Dvoikin himself recalled, calling them, like the current Russian propaganda, Nazis. “We cleared the entire region from nationalists, caught in the forests, abandoned farms”.

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To Putin's left sat Gennady Zaitsev, born in 1934.. At the time of the outbreak of hostilities, he was only five years old, and at the time of the end - 11 years old. Zaitsev was called up for military service only in 1953.. After the end of military service, he remained in the army, and in 1959 began to serve in the KGB..

In 1968, Zaitsev participated in the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops.. He led a group of the 7th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR in an operation that captured the building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Prague. In the 70s, Zaitsev headed the Alfa anti-terrorist group created by Yuri Andropov..

Recall that the victory parade in Moscow was especially modest. The New York Times believes that such a parade was a reflection of Russia's problems in the war against Ukraine..