Sidor Artemyevich Kovpak

Partisan formation commander, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Major General (1943). Born on 7 June 1887 in the town of Kotelva, Poltava province. He fought in the First World War and was awarded two Crosses of St George, then served with partisan units in Ukraine during the Civil War. By 1941 he chaired the Putivl town executive committee. In the autumn of 1941 he formed the Putivl partisan detachment, which grew into a large formation. Unlike most partisan units, Kovpak's formation fought a war of movement, making raids of hundreds of kilometres through the German rear, wrecking communications and disabling railway junctions. His best-known operation is the Carpathian raid of June to October 1943, in which the formation covered more than two thousand kilometres across Ukraine, reached the Carpathian foothills and struck the oil installations around Drohobych. It came out of the raid in scattered groups and with heavy losses. He was made Hero of the Soviet Union on 18 May 1942 and again on 4 January 1944. After the war he served in the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR. He died on 11 December 1967 and is buried at Baikove Cemetery in Kiev.