Soviet Deserter in Hiding for 44 Years, Paper Says
A World War II Soviet army deserter hid for 44 years in the cellar of his wife’s home in a Ukrainian farming village, emerging only occasionally at night, a Moscow newspaper reported on Sunday.
It said the man, Ivan Kondratyenko, was discovered at the end of January by police investigating a fire in the village of Shevchenkovo, near the city of Konotop, northeast of Kiev.
According to the newspaper Stroitelnaya Gazeta, Kondratyenko was a healthy 25-year-old when he first took refuge in the cellar. He emerged as a skinny, bent old man with gray hair and an ash-white face.
The newspaper said he first deserted in the fall of 1941, soon after the Soviet Union entered the war with the invasion by Nazi Germany, and that he set up house under German occupation with a local widow in Shevchenkovo.
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