"Dozens of medals and orders shine on his military tunic; despite being 96 years old, he is strong and straight, only his right ear, which was wounded during the war, has not been healed. He easily comes to the stage, his voice is firm, even with the microphone turned off, and the whole audience can hear him: "We drove fascism from this land and we will not let it return!"
This is how the propagandists from the "Union of Moscow Journalists" describe a meeting with a Berdyansk veteran of World War II, who became a hero of pro-Russian propaganda after the occupation of the city. At the same time, the man, who will be 99 in August, is attributed not only different names, but also different heroic feats. The Suspilne investigative editorial office has checked the veteran’s story and found a person who knows him to show how the Russian propaganda manipulates the topic of World War II.
The liberator of Berdyansk or the tank crewman who stormed Berlin: how propagandists get entangled in lies
According to the information that the Suspilne investigative editorial office received from the Berdyansk City Council, as of February 24, 2022, 133 World War II veterans were registered in the city. In May 2024, the occupation authorities congratulated 20 veterans on Victory Day, and in April 2025, they mentioned only 6 veterans.
On May 8, 2022, the Crimea24 TV channel aired a story from occupied Berdyansk about 16 participants in the hostilities of 1941-1945 who were living in the city at that time. However, only two of them were shown in the video. One of them was named Yurii Yakhno.
Correspondent of the propaganda TV channel Margarita Semenyuk said that "back in 1943, young Yurii Yakhno, who had just turned 17, was already liberating Berdyansk from the German invaders". The path to the front, according to the veteran, began in April: then, he said, his native village was liberated during the Proskuriv-Chernivtsi offensive operation. In May, he was drafted into the army.
At first glance, it is a story about heroism and young courage. However, everything changes when we look at the facts.
The Proskuriv-Chernivtsi offensive operation, according to the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, lasted from March 4 to April 17, 1944. It took place in the territory of Right-Bank Ukraine. Berdyansk is located on the other side of the Dnipro River and was liberated earlier, in 1943.
On September 1, 2022, "Main in Berdyansk" public group on the Russian social network published a photo with a veteran: a familiar jacket, familiar medals, and the same pale pink wallpaper. However, the man is no longer named Yurii Yakhno, but Hryhorii Rozuman — a tank crewman and "hero of the Berlin operation".
In May 2023, another photo from the already familiar room appeared on the official Telegram channel "United Russia. Zaporizhzhia region". However, this time, instead of a gray jacket, the man is wearing a military tunic and a new status is attributed to him by propagandists: "Guards Colonel of tank troops Hryhorii Rozuman".
In July 2024, a long interview was published on the website of the propaganda publication "Komsomolskaya Pravda" in which Rozuman told about his military career. The text states that he was born on August 23, 1926 in "Kamianets-Podilska region of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic". However, Kamianets-Podilska region was officially created only on September 22, 1937, more than 10 years after the stated date of birth.
The author of the article writes that the future tank crewman was in the 7th grade when the war started and spent two and a half years under the rule of the Third Reich.
In April 2025, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of Victory Day, the "To Remember" project was launched on the propaganda "Za!TV". The hero of one of the episodes was Hryhorii Rozuman. The description of the video indicates that he met the "Great Patriotic War" as a 13-year-old teenager. However, we should remind that Hryhorii was born in 1926, and the German-Soviet war began in 1941, that is, the boy was almost 15.
Hryhorii himself says in the video, "In 1942, the Germans gathered us, 15-year-old boys, and organized training. They were preparing to send specialists to Germany. For disobedience, the Germans shot parents and burned down houses. In 1944, my area was liberated by the Red Army. Thus, a month later I was mobilized and sent to the tank troops."
In general, the analysis of pro-Russian materials indicates inconsistency in the presentation of information about the veteran. First, Yurii Yakhno, the liberator of Berdyansk, appears in the public space. Later, some details from his biography are attributed to Hryhorii Rozuman. And after 2023, the version with Yakhno disappears, giving way to the story about tank crewman Rozuman.
Our search for information about the latter led us to a person close to him. Our source agreed to share the facts he knew, but insisted on anonymity for security reasons for the family, which still lives in occupied Berdyansk.
"He was born in Khmelnytska region, where he met the beginning of World War II. When the German-Nazi occupation began, he hid in a dovecote. Then he managed to get to the Soviet military. He tried to join the army, but at first they did not want to take him because of his young age," our anonymous source said.
According to our source, the veteran told his loved ones that he had added a few years of age to get into the military service. He was a tank crewman and, as propagandists wrote, he is deaf in one ear due to a wound. He has a son, a stepdaughter, and three grandchildren.
Our source added that Rozuman missed the Soviet Union, so he was happy when the Russians occupied Berdyansk:
"The Russians had all the lists, so they found him as a veteran. They pampered him, and he loves it all very much. He and his son are supporters of Russia. The son, despite the fact that he was born and raised in Berdyansk, considers himself Russian, because he worked in the east of the Russian Federation for 7 years and lived in Moscow for a year and a half."
It is currently difficult to verify the information received from our source that Hryhorii Rozuman may be younger. After the occupation of Berdyansk in March 2022, most of the archival materials related to the participants of the Anti-Terrorist Operation and the events of World War II were destroyed, says Nataliia Tokman, head of the Department of Labor and Social Protection of the Population of the Executive Committee of the Berdyansk City Council.
The website of the Russian information system "Memory of the people" mentions the awarding of Hryhorii Rozuman, born in 1926, a native of Khmelnytska region. According to the documents from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, he was awarded the Order of the Great Patriotic War of the 2nd degree in 1985.
In a recent interview to the propaganda channel "Za!TV", the veteran himself told about the four combat medals that he had been awarded for participating in the Vistula-Oder, East Pomeranian, and Berlin operations.
The Suspilne investigative editorial office contacted Volodymyr Tretiak, head of the department of scientific and fund work of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in World War II, to find out whether Rozuman really has combat awards, which could indicate his participation in the war.
By analyzing archival photos taken before the occupation of the city, as well as those taken after 2022, the expert was able to identify 18 medals and 6 orders on the veteran’s jacket. Among them, there are two Orders of the Great Patriotic War of the 1st and 2nd degrees. He also has four combat medals: "For the Victory over Germany", "For the Capture of Berlin", "For the Liberation of Warsaw", and "For Battle Merit".
Other medals are jubilee medals, awarded for the 20th, 40th, 65th, and 70th anniversaries of Victory Day.
As Volodymyr Tretiak explained, during World War II, children aged 13-15 were not drafted into the army. According to the Soviet legislation, people were officially mobilized only at the age of 18. However, in 1943-1944, there were exceptions: field military registration and enlistment offices sometimes took 17-year-old boys to the front, given the critical need for manpower.
"Boys could come to a mobilization point or a medical commission and lie about their age to sign up. They could say their documents were lost, so no one could check it. Or the commission could turn a blind eye to their age because they needed manpower. All cases were individual," says Tretiak.
Lack of attention, Victory cult, and "professional veterans"
While monitoring Ukrainian media, we found footage confirming the presence of Hryhorii Rozuman at events dedicated to the victory over Nazism in World War II. For example, the Berdyansk City Council’s Facebook page has a photo taken in May 2014, in which Hryhorii Rozuman is sitting in a gray jacket familiar from propaganda materials. The post states that veterans were honored at a restaurant.
A few months later, in October 2014, a new post about local World War II heroes, including Hryhorii Rozuman, appeared on the Berdyansk City Council’s page. The text under the photo states that the veterans were presented with personalized watches.
The last post dedicated to veterans was published on the Berdyansk City Council page in September 2021. At that time, local authorities congratulated people with disabilities due to the war and participants in the hostilities of 1941-1945 on City Day and on the 78th anniversary of the liberation of Berdyansk from Nazi invaders. Hryhorii Rozuman is also present in the photo.
However, in two years, in 2023, the veteran complained about the lack of attention from the Ukrainian authorities. At least, that is what the propagandists of "Komsomolskaya Pravda" wrote, referring to his words, "He is sincerely glad that Russia has returned to the Zaporizhzhia lands. Now they treat history better — they remember, the parades are beautiful, and the administration does not forget the heroes. And in Ukraine there is nothing".
Since 2023, Rozuman has become a regular participant in pro-Russian events dedicated to the glorification of the Soviet past. However, propagandists are probably afraid that he might say something wrong. A video from May 8, 2024, published under the tag "SouthYoung" on a Russian social network, illustrates this. In the 50-minute video, Russian teenagers thank Rozuman for the "victory" and ask questions about the war. However, already in the first minutes, after being asked about the date of the draft, Rozuman turns to the journalist and asks if he can answer. Moreover, when a teenager asks about the most memorable battle, the veteran begins to recall the events near the Polish city of Gdynia. Having realized that his story is not in favor of the Soviet army, he falls silent and asks for permission again.
In addition, propagandists attribute to the veteran words about the unity of nations and the invincibility of Russians. Next is a quote from the Telegram channel "Volunteers of Victory". Rozuman allegedly said, "We must remember our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, remember that the Russian people are invincible".
According to Serhii Bilivnenko, PhD in History and acting head of the Department of Source Studies and Public Communications of the Faculty of History and International Relations of Zaporizhzhia National University, after the end of World War II, the Soviet authorities tried to maintain control over the almost 10-million army through honors and awards. In the 1970s, dinners became popular, in which veterans were given so-called "frontline 100 grams of vodka". Later, patriotic education was developed in the Soviet Union: on the eve of May 9, war veterans visited schools and told about their frontline deeds. Usually, this was done by so-called "professional veterans" who had never been on the frontline. They told invented stories about the war that they had learned from books. In the 1980s, they began to be ridiculed in jokes.
"Of course, there are still people who were participants in World War II. They are all about 100 years old. It is convenient for Russia that there are only a few of them left," the expert noted.
The small number of still alive real veterans allows Russian propaganda to convince people that war was not about blood, death, and suffering, but about victory, fireworks, and parades. As Serhii Bilivnenko explains, the Russian propaganda machine not only heroizes its army, but also aestheticizes Nazism. For example, in the popular Soviet film "17 Moments of Spring", Russians and Germans are depicted as equal enemies who met on the battlefield, while other nations who fought for independence, such as Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, and Ukrainians, were shown as "traitors", "bandits", and "Nazi servants". This fits into the Soviet model of “great and small nations”, in which Russians are the leaders and others must obey.
"This cult of great nations, combined with Victory cult, led to the terrible war in Ukraine, which is the largest in Europe since World War II," the expert concluded.
