Badge "Veteran Of The 318th Mountain Rifle Novorossijsk Division".

[Pobeda45]

Agreed, I despise the practice of splitting up groups.. Likewise, many of us have service records and files in our collections, likely looted from archives of the (former) Soviet republics. Among these I have a personnel file for a full Glory cavalier, a Soviet Legion of Merit Holder, and a HSU.. One day I'll figure out the logistics to get them back to the families of these heroic men.

[Al-muell]

The story behind the files is often that they were the ones stored in the units and were supposed to be destroyed (there was a copy in the TsA MO and local military archive) after a pre-set period after closing or receipient's death. This is likely, although I am not sure if true. But if so, they are actually saved, not stolen.

[Pobeda45]

It's true, we are taking far better care of these documents than anyone else could have. From my end, I can vouch for all docs being scanned before being archivally stored.