Last Veteran of WWII Battle Group Marching Alone in Victory Day Parade — Lone WWII veteran crying while walking down a wet street holding flowers and a swirled

Last Veteran of WWII Battle Group Marching Alone in Victory Day Parade

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Published October 27, 2026

A 2007 photograph of a weeping elderly Russian veteran at a St. Petersburg Victory Day parade began spreading on Reddit in May 2013, usually captioned as the last surviving member of his World War II battle group marching alone. The image was taken by photographer Aleksandr Petrosyan, and by April 2016 a HypeDojo Facebook repost of the captioned version gathered more than 800,000 shares in a month.

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Overview

Captioned versions of the image typically present the weeping decorated veteran with text claiming he is the sole living member of his wartime unit, marching the parade route alone while bystanders reach to steady him2. English-language captions almost never mention Russia, Victory Day on May 9th, or the actual 2007 setting, which let the picture travel as a generic tribute post1.

Viewers from several Allied countries read him as one of their own, with the same photograph circulating as a British, Australian, and American veteran in different reposts1. His identity was never confirmed, though Dr. Igor Sutyagin of the UK's Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies identified one of his medals as the Order of the Patriotic War, a Soviet decoration given to Red Army service members of World War II1. That medal is the detail that locks the image to a Soviet veteran rather than any Western army, even as the Last Veteran of WWII Battle Group caption keeps erasing it.

Origin & Background

Platform
Russian web (source photo) / Reddit (viral English spread)
Date
2013

Russian photographer Aleksandr Petrosyan took the picture on Nevsky Prospekt during the May 9th, 2007 Victory Day parade in St. Petersburg, Russia1. Petrosyan told BBC Trending that he recalled snapping the crying veteran that day but never spoke to the man, so no name was recorded and the subject stayed anonymous1.

For several years the photograph circulated on Russian-language sites around the Victory Day holiday each May before an English caption pushed it into the wider meme pool5. The specific "last veteran of his WWII battle group marching alone" wording appears to have attached to the image in English-language social reposts around 2013, with no confirmed original author2.

How It Spread

On May 8th, 2013, a Reddit user submitted the image to r/pics as "Emotional WWII veteran at a Victory Day parade in Russia," where it earned 2,862 upvotes before the thread was archived2. The photograph was reposted to r/pics on May 9th, 2015 under a near-identical title, this time gathering 4,550 upvotes3.

On April 1st, 2016, English-language news page HypeDojo posted a captioned version to Facebook describing the man as "the last veteran of his WWII battle group," and the share count passed 800,000 within the first month4. The surge drew mainstream attention two weeks later, when BBC Trending published "The mystery veteran who won the internet's heart" on April 16th, 2016, tracking down Petrosyan and consulting Dr. Igor Sutyagin to identify the Soviet medals on the man's chest1. Public radio program The World covered the story in a parallel segment about the unidentified veteran6.

Debunking the Allied-nation misattributions did not stop the Last Veteran of WWII Battle Group caption from reappearing each spring, especially around Memorial Day in the United States and Victory Day in Russia5.

Timeline

2007-05-09

Aleksandr Petrosyan photographs the crying veteran on Nevsky Prospekt during the Victory Day parade in St. Petersburg.

2013-05-08

The image is submitted to Reddit's r/pics as "Emotional WWII veteran at a Victory Day parade in Russia" and gets 2,862 upvotes.

2015-05-09

A second r/pics submission of the same photograph gathers 4,550 upvotes.

2016-04-01

English news page HypeDojo posts a "last veteran of his WWII battle group" caption to Facebook, passing 800,000 shares in a month.

2016-04-16

BBC Trending publishes "The mystery veteran who won the internet's heart," tracing the photograph back to Petrosyan and identifying the Order of the Patriotic War medal.

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