Alexander Matrosov

0n 5 January 2023, the day after the monument to Matrosov in his place of birth Dnipro, Ukraine (then Yekaterinoslav, USSR) was dismantled in as part of the derussification and decommunization campaigns following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Mayor of Dnipro Borys Filatov claimed that Matrosov had never been to Yekaterinoslav but he had pretended to be born there so that he looked like a Russian person in Soviet documents.

Matrosov was a private in the 2nd Separate Rifle Battalion of the 91st Independent Siberian Volunteer Brigade, later renamed and the 254th Rifle Regiment and reorganized within the 56th Guards Rifle Division of the Soviet Army. He was armed with a light machine-gun.

Matrosov is the main character of the 1947 war film, Private Alexander Matrosov (Рядовой Александр Матросов), directed by Leonid Lukov.

On 23 and 24 February 1943, in the battle to recapture village of Chernushki, near Velikiye Luki, currently in Loknyansky District, Pskov Oblast, the Soviet forces struggled to take a German heavy machine-gun, housed within a concrete pillbox, which blocked the route to the village. It had already claimed the lives of many of the Red Army troops. Matrosov crept up to the pillbox and released a burst of rounds into the slot in the pillbox. One round hit a mine inside, and the machine-gun temporarily fell silent. It restarted a few minutes later. At this point Matrosov physically pulled himself up and jammed his body into the slot, wholly blocking the fire at his comrades but clearly at the cost of his own life. This allowed his unit to advance and capture the pillbox and thereafter retake the village.

On August 6, 1942 in the battle on the river Don an ethnic Kyrgyz soldier of the Red Army Cholponbay Tuleberdiev [ru] similarly used his body to cover a German pillbox machine-gun.

Alexander Matveyevich Matrosov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Матве́евич Матро́сов, Bashkir: Шәкирйән Юныс улы Мөхәмәтйәнов, Ukrainian: Олександр Матвійович Матросов; February 5, 1924 – February 27, 1943), born in Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro, but according by Dnipro authorities he was not born in Yekaterinoslav) was a Soviet infantry soldier during the Second World War, posthumously awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union for blocking a German machine-gun with his body.