Fyodor Ostashenko

Fyodor Afanasyevich Ostashenko
Fyodor Ostashenko on a 2016 stamp of Transnistria
Born19 June 1896
Bolshaya Lyubshchina, Yanovichskoy volost, Vitebsky Uyezd, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire
Died27 October 1976(1976-10-27) (aged 80)
Moscow, Soviet Union
Buried
Allegiance
Service / branch
Years of service
  • 1915–1918
  • 1919–1923
  • 1923–1956
RankLieutenant general
Commands
Battles / wars
Awards

Fyodor Afanasyevich Ostashenko (Russian: Фёдор Афанасьевич Осташенко; 19 June 1896 – 27 October 1976) was a Belarusian Soviet Army lieutenant general and a Hero of the Soviet Union.

Drafted into the Imperial Russian Army during World War I, Ostashenko served with the Southwestern Front between 1916 and 1917 and was demobilized in early 1918. Returning to his home area, he joined the Red Army, serving as a political worker and then as a junior commander during the Russian Civil War and Polish–Soviet War. After the end of the war, between 1922 and 1923, he was arrested on charges of aiding deserters, but after a suspended sentence was ultimately reinstated in the Red Army. Ostashenko served in command and staff positions during the interwar period and when Operation Barbarossa began in June 1941 was deputy commander of the 6th Rifle Division. After the division suffered heavy losses in the opening days of the war Ostashenko became acting commander before being transferred to command the 368th Rifle Division in September.

Having spent much of 1942 in a course at the Voroshilov Higher Military Academy, he briefly took command of the 35th Guards Rifle Division during the Battle of Stalingrad before transferring to lead the 47th Guards Rifle Division in 1943. Ostashenko commanded the 57th Rifle Corps from early 1944 and was made a Hero of the Soviet Union for his leadership of it in two crossings of the Tisza during the Budapest Offensive in October and November. In the final months of the war and early postwar period he commanded the 25th Guards Rifle Corps. After serving as an instructor at the Voroshilov Higher Military Academy from the late 1940s, Ostashenko was dismissed from service in 1956.