In the article “Whose Berest?” Yurii Latysh reflects on the symbolic weight and ambiguity of the recent posthumous awarding of the title Hero of the Russian Federation to Aleksei Berest — a lieutenant of the Red Army who commanded the unit that stormed the Reichstag and raised the Victory Banner over it. Twenty years after Berest was recognized as a Hero of Ukraine (2005), the Russian authorities declared him a Hero of Russia, omitting mention of his Ukrainian origins and his already existing award.

The author emphasizes that historical memory has become a battlefield of ideologies, where the remembrance of heroes is appropriated and reinterpreted within contemporary political narratives.