Ivan Afanasenko

Ivan Prokofievich Afanasenko (Russian: Иван Прокофьевич Афанасенко; 16 January 1923 – 11 September 1975) was a Red Army Sergeant and a Hero of the Soviet Union. Afanasenko was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for reportedly crossing the Danube multiple times under fire between 4 December and 5 December 1944. Postwar, he worked as a tractor driver in Volgograd.

Early life Afanasenko was born on 16 January 1923 in Nizhny-Stebelevka village in the Taman District of the Kuban-Black Sea Oblast, in a family of peasants of Russian ethnicity. He graduated from elementary school and worked on the farm. He later became a hunter. On 28 October 1944, Afanasenko was awarded the Medal "For Courage". By December 1944, he was an Efreitor in the 66th Guards Separate Combat Engineer Battalion of the same division. During the Vienna Offensive, Afanasenko reportedly shot down a German aircraft with a machine gun on 10 April,

Postwar In 1946, Afanasenko was demobilized and returned to Krasnoarmeysky District. In 1947, he graduated from a mechanics' high school.