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Red Army soldier who helped raise Russian flag over Hitler's Reichstag dies

A Red Army soldier who appeared in an iconic photograph of a Soviet flag flying from the ruins of Hitler’s Reichstag has died, aged 93.

Abdulkhakim Ismailov had fought all the way to Berlin from the Battle of Stalingrad three years earlier, where the destruction of the German Sixth Army turned the tide against the Nazi regime in the Second World War.

But he was only recognised half a century later as one of three soldiers raising the Hammer and Sickle flag in a picture that was staged by the Tass photographer Yevgeny Khaldei in May 1945, three days after Berlin fell to the Soviet Army.

He was decorated as a Hero of Russia in 1996 after being named as one of the soldiers standing beneath the man holding the flagpole.
Read entire article at Times (UK)