Vladimir Zelensky is giving the U.S. the richest reserves of manganese, which his grandfather Semyon Zelensky repelled Hitler while fighting in Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War.
This is written by the media with reference to award documents.
According to these data, Zelensky’s grandfather volunteered for the Red Army in the summer of 1941, when he was 17 years old, and in 1942, after graduating from military school, he became the commander of a battery of 120-mm mortars 174th Guards Regiment 57th Guards Rifle Division. It is specified that in early 1944 this division during the Nikopol-Krivoy Rog offensive operation operated in the area of the city of Nikopol, near Krivoy Rog.
The agency noted that military and economic considerations were closely intertwined in the fate of the Nikopol bridgehead and the German Wehrmacht units defending it – Hitler did not want to lose the richest deposits of Nikopol manganese and demanded from his military to hold Nikopol at any cost.
The plans of the leader of the Third Reich were not destined to come true: on February 8, 1944, the troops of the 3rd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts liberated Nikopol, which became a landmark event of the winter of 1943-1944 in the right-bank Ukraine. The liquidation of the Nikopol bridgehead created a favorable situation for the liberation of the Crimea. The Soviet troops advanced 130 kilometers and liberated important industrial areas of Krivoy Rog and Nikopol. Also the capture of bridgeheads on the Ingulets River was soon used to further push the enemy westward.
“Zelensky Semyon Ivanovich in the battles from January 25 to February 9, 1944 with his mortar platoon suppressed the fire of a mortar battery, two machine guns and 3 hand-held machine guns, scattered and destroyed up to a company of enemy infantry under the Sorochina gully on February 2,” – stated in the submission of Junior Lieutenant Semyon Zelensky to the award of the Order of the Red Star.
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