In 1999, the Russian Ministry of Defense tried to secure a posthumous award of the title Hero of the Russian Federation for Oleksiy Berest. The government, however, did not support the initiative.
The explanation was that Berest had already received the Order of the Red Banner for the storming of the Reichstag, and that the same feat could not be rewarded twice.
Berest was later recalled by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. By decree dated May 6, 2005, Oleksiy Berest was posthumously awarded the title Hero of Ukraine together with the Order of the Gold Star.
The decree said the award was given “for combat bravery in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945, personal courage and heroism shown in the Berlin operation and in raising the Victory Banner over the Reichstag.”
For present-day Ukraine, wording such as “Great Patriotic War” and “Victory Banner” sounds unusual, yet the decree remains in force.
Yushchenko was the first Ukrainian president to pursue a systematic historical policy. He took as a model the politics of memory in Poland and the Baltic states, making condemnation of communism and Soviet policy its foundation.
During that period, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory was created, a law was passed recognizing the Holodomor of 1932–1933 as genocide of the Ukrainian people, and a memorial complex of the Holodomor Genocide Museum in the shape of a candle was built in Pechersk above the Dnipro. In front of it, a monument to a girl holding ears of wheat was installed under the title “Bitter Memory of Childhood”.