MOSCOW. Feb 16 (Interfax) - The Soviet major-general Alexander Lizyukov has been awarded with the Zhukov Order posthumously, according to a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin, posted on the official legal information website on Thursday.
"Maj. Gen. Alexander Ilyuch Lizyukov is hereby awarded (posthumously) with the Zhukov Order for having skillfully led his troops in combat during strategic operations of the 1941-1942 Great Patriotic War," the document said.
The Soviet military commander, born in 1900, in late June 1941 Lizyukov, then a colonel, headed up the defense headquarters in the Belarusian town of Borisov, for which he received a Soviet Union Hero star and a Lenin order just over a month later. Around the same time, he took command of First Moscow Motor-Rifle Division which successfully countered a Nazi attack and was dubbed a guards' division.
In January 1942 Lizyukov was assigned the rank of major-general, after which he was appointed commander of the Second Guards Riflemen Corps and six months later become commander of the 5th Tank Army.
Lizyukov went missing on July 23, 1942, after trying, as a member of a Kliment Voroshilov tank crew, to help one of his brigades out of encirclement. Only a year later it was discovered that his tank had been shot down and only the driver managed to survive.
A street in Voronezh was named after Lizyukov during the Soviet period.