Oleksiy Berest: Monument Unveiling

Sumy TV. The program "Oleksiy Berest — Trial by Fate" from August 31, 2005 is dedicated to the biography of the veteran of the Soviet-German war, Hero of Ukraine Oleksiy Berest, and the grand opening of the monument in the city of Okhtyrka, Sumy region.

On the video: the opening ceremony, a theatrical performance with elements of Soviet propaganda, laying flowers; the monument from different angles, a commemorative plaque; veterans talk about Oleksiy Berest.

Comments: Oleksiy Berest's daughter Iryna Berest; Minister of Defense of Ukraine Anatoliy Hrytsenko; veterans Mykhailo Dzyubin, Oleksiy Chumak, Matviy Gnitii; Head of the Sumy Regional State Administration Mykola Lavryk.

Reference: Oleksiy Berest is a Ukrainian soldier of the Red Army, a direct participant in the installation of the "Victory Banner" over the Reichstag on April 30, 1945, whose role was recorded in military documents, but deliberately marginalized by Soviet official historiography. In modern Ukraine, he is recognized as a Hero of Ukraine (2005, posthumously) as a participant in World War II and a symbol of the unjust exclusion of Ukrainians from the Soviet heroic narrative. The awarding of the title of Hero of the russian federation to him in 2025 is considered by Ukrainian researchers as an element of modern Russian memorial and propaganda policy aimed at the retrospective appropriation of figures of Ukrainian origin within the framework of imperial discourse.