1944 | “Murmansk Medal” 1991 | Medal of Ushakov 2020
Soviet Union: 1944
In early 1944, the Soviet Union honored a handful of United States merchant seamen for their courage under fire and their valor while on convoy to Murmansk. A total of ten individuals received an array of Soviet medals: the Order of the Red Star, the Medal “For Valor”, and the Medal “For Military Merit”, regardless of their shipboard position. Most of the recipients were also awarded the highest American Merchant Marine decoration, the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal, which recognized their bravery and the trials all seamen faced while on Arctic Convoy.
| name | ship | ussr medal | shipboard position | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alexander S. Henry | Deer Lodge | Order of the Red Star | Master | MM-DSM |
| Frank F. Townsend | Deer Lodge | Medal “For Valor” | Chief Engineer | MM-DSM |
| Clyde Neil Andrews | Heffron | Order of the Red Star | 2nd Mate | MM-DSM |
| Edward Michael Fetherston | Heffron | Order of the Red Star | 3rd Mate | MM-DSM |
| Romuald P. Holubowicz | Syros, Hybert, & J. L. M. Curry | Medal “For Military Merit” | Cadet-Midshipman (Deck) | |
| Richard E. Hocken | William Moultrie | Medal “For Military Merit” | Master | MM-DSM |
| Maurice Breen | Sahale | Order of the Red Star | Purser | MM-DSM |
| Kyle Vaughn Johnson | Lafayette | Medal “For Valor” | O.S. | MM-DSM |
| Julius W. Lintlom | White Clover | Medal “For Valor” | Master | |
| Harry F. Ryan | Campfire | Medal “For Military Merit” | Master |
Russia: 1991
For me, one of the more interesting post-war decorations for American Merchant Mariners is the so-called “Murmansk Medal.” Its award was the catalyst for the following year’s award of full-size medals for wartime ribbons to veteran Mariners on 19 May 1992.
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the strategic calculus for the Western Allies shifted overnight. If the Soviet Union fell, the full weight of the German war machine would pivot toward Britain. The supplies that could prevent that collapse would have to travel by sea, and the most direct route was the most brutal: north around occupied Norway, above the Arctic Circle, to the Soviet ports of Murmansk and Archangel. The passage would come to be called the Suicide Run.
The name was earned. Convoy duty in these waters placed men at the intersection of every danger the North Atlantic and Arctic could produce. The German Luftwaffe, operating from bases in occupied Norway, flew bombing and strafing missions against the convoys almost without pause. The Kriegsmarine deployed U-boats and surface warships along the entire route. The Arctic itself was an adversary: sea spray froze on decks and rigging, gun turrets iced over, and a man pitched into the water after his ship was sunk would be dead within minutes unless rescued. Ian Millar, who spent decades documenting this campaign and whose writings and correspondence form the primary sources for this account, described the arithmetic of survival plainly: those retrieved from the sea lost fingers, arms, and legs to frostbite; others gained the salvation of a ship’s deck only to expire there.
The worst single disaster was the scattering of convoy PQ-17 in July 1942, when an order to disperse left twenty-three of thirty-four Allied ships to be hunted down and sunk individually. In total across the entire campaign, 722 Allied transports were steered toward the Soviet northern ports; 58 Allied ships never arrived.
The crews of the merchant ships consisted of civilian volunteers — men who could not meet the service requirements for the Army or Navy, men too old or too young for conventional military service, as well as younger men who had never seen a ship or the sea. Alongside them on each vessel rode a detachment of United States Naval Armed Guard: Navy gunners assigned to man the weapons mounted on merchant ships. Merchant seamen and Navy gunners lived and worked together aboard these ships, and they died together when the ships went down.
The cargo they carried was the sinew of Soviet resistance: tanks, railroad cars, ammunition, and food. A young North Carolina Naval Armed Guard sailor named Lonnie Whitson Lloyd, writing home to his mother from somewhere in the convoy route, put it plainly:
“Mom, if it were not for the merchant seamen bringing up ammunition, I would not be here today. We did not leave our guns for three days and nights, and there was no sleep. I cannot tell you anymore, but I will tell you about things you would not believe if I get out of this alive.”
He did not get out of this alive. Lloyd survived the Murmansk Run but was later lost in the sinking of the collier Blackpoint off the Rhode Island coast. His letter home, preserved and published by Ian Millar in Sea Classics magazine, stands as stark testimony to the shared peril of the men who made the run.
What those convoys meant to the Soviet Union was never in doubt on the Russian side. Years later, the Soviet Charge d’Affairs Sergi Chetverikov would tell a gathering of American veterans that the Soviet people would always remember the sacrifices of the crews of the 58 Allied ships that perished on the way to their ports. The inscription at the Piskarevskoya Memorial Cemetery in Leningrad said it for all time: “No one has been forgotten… nothing has been forgotten.”
The same could not be said of the men’s own government.
The Long Neglect
For four decades after the war ended, the United States government treated its merchant mariners as though their service had never happened. They were classified as civilians throughout the war and remained civilians afterward. They received no veterans’ benefits, no GI Bill, no discharge papers, no pension rights. They could not obtain medical care at veterans’ hospitals. They could not march in veterans’ parades without being challenged. They had suffered a casualty rate during the war higher than any branch of the U.S. military except the Marines — roughly four percent of the 243,000 Americans who served, some 9,521 men, were killed — and they had been paid nothing but commercial wages while doing it.
It was not until 1988 — forty-three years after the end of the war — that Congress formally granted veteran status to the merchant mariners of World War II. Even then, the recognition arrived with an indignity that Ian Millar would later note with particular bitterness: when the U.S. government moved to strike physical medals for the various Merchant Marine service ribbons, the veterans were required to pay for them out of pocket. In cases where awards went to the next of kin of men long dead, Millar considered this not merely wrong but shameful.
It was against this backdrop — four decades of official silence from their own country — that the possibility of foreign recognition began to take shape.
The Medal
In 1985, the Soviet government established the Jubilee Medal “Forty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945” to mark the fortieth anniversary of Allied victory over Nazi Germany. The medal — a 32mm circular brass disc mounted on a red silk moiré ribbon with green edge stripes and the Ribbon of St. George along the left edge — was awarded broadly to Soviet veterans, partisans, and home-front workers who had contributed to the war effort.
The medal was not restricted to Soviet citizens. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet authorized it to be given to foreigners who had contributed to the war effort, and the Soviet government initially honored British, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand seamen and naval veterans who had served on the Arctic convoys. American merchant mariners and their Naval Armed Guard counterparts were not included.
The omission was not principled. It was an oversight compounded by Cold War habits of thought, and it would take the persistent efforts of one private individual to correct it.
The Proposal
Ian A. Millar grew up with the sea and its losses in his blood. His father had served in the British Merchant Navy. In September 1941, his father’s freighter — bound for England with a load of sulfur — was torpedoed by a German submarine near Greenland and sank in less than a minute. His father survived, later joined the United States Merchant Marine, and served until his death in 1969 aboard a freighter bound for Vietnam. Millar was twenty-three years old at the time, serving in the Coast Guard.
Millar himself served four years in the Coast Guard in the 1960s, mostly aboard ice breakers in polar regions — waters not unlike those his father had crossed under fire. He later settled in Kernersville, North Carolina, working for a facilities maintenance company and writing about merchant seamen in his spare time, often until four in the morning to finish and mail newsletters. He descended from English sea captains on his mother’s side and Welsh seafarers on his father’s.
His broader passion, as he described it in an interview with the Greensboro News & Record, was “seeing that various countries honor the merchant seamen who have served them.” He had concentrated particularly on the men who, at the time of the war, were reviled as bums and draft-dodgers — men whose civilian status obscured a casualty rate that exceeded nearly every branch of the armed forces. He had worked to press the U.S. government to grant veterans’ benefits to merchant seamen, and he had pressed foreign governments to give their own merchant seamen similar recognition.
In 1987, Millar learned through newspaper copies sent from Canada that the Soviet government had been awarding the 40th Anniversary Medal to British, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand seamen. Americans had been left out entirely. He began writing letters: to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, to government offices in Moscow. He received no response. He then wrote directly to President Mikhail Gorbachev.
That, as Millar later recalled, “got his attention.” Gorbachev, apparently seeking gestures of goodwill as the Soviet Union began to loosen, instructed the Embassy to start collecting names. Notices were distributed through Master, Mate and Pilot, the professional newspaper of the merchant marine. Applications were reviewed against service records to verify convoy service to Murmansk or Archangel between 1941 and 1945. The Naval Armed Guard were included as eligible recipients alongside the merchant seamen.
The work consumed years of Millar’s spare time. He coordinated with the Russian Embassy, helped veterans navigate the application process, and worked to reach eligible men who might not have heard about the program. He later stepped away from the effort due to lack of funds and very little support from veterans’ groups. In a letter written in February 2020, reflecting on the whole arc of the program, he was characteristically direct:
“I had put in several years of spare time, night hours etc. in this effort to help our veterans and the Russian Embassy with the program but had to let it all go due to lack of funds and very little support from veteran’s groups and the like. It was nice to have the veterans honored in this way in as much as they had received so very little recognition or thanks from our own government for what they did. They deserved far better in my opinion.”
After securing the award for Americans, Millar pressed the Russians further: to extend the medal to Norwegian seamen who had served on the same convoys. The Russians agreed and did so — an additional, largely unheralded diplomatic achievement accomplished through the same quiet persistence.
The Program in Practice
Once the Soviet Embassy began collecting names in the late 1980s, the program moved from approval to ceremony. By late 1991, well over 1,000 Americans had submitted applications. Millar estimated at that point that at least 3,000 men were still living and eligible. The total number of American recipients ultimately ran into the thousands, including those who received the 50th and 60th anniversary jubilee medals issued in subsequent years, for which many 40th-medal recipients automatically qualified.
Each recipient received a package containing the medal; a citation in Russian; and a letter in English thanking him in the name of the Soviet President, recognizing “your outstanding courage and personal contribution to the allied support of the people of the Soviet Union who fought for freedom against Nazi Germany.” For men who had waited four decades without a word of official thanks from their own country, the letter from Moscow carried a weight difficult to overstate.
The Russian Embassy’s key coordinators throughout the program were Natalie Semenikhina, First Secretary and Public Affairs, and Yuri Menshikov, Attaché and Public Affairs. Millar dedicated his 1993 account in Sea Classics to them, writing that without their tireless efforts the award ceremonies would not have been possible.
The Ceremonies
First Group — 31 January 1991 | Soviet Embassy, Washington, DC
The first formal group presentation of the medal to American veterans was held on 31 January 1991 at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC. Fifty-six veterans received their awards in a ceremony Millar documented in his December 1991 article for Sea Classics.
The Soviet Charge d’Affairs Sergi Chetverikov addressed the gathering on behalf of President Gorbachev:
“May I, on behalf of President Gorbachev and the Government of the Soviet Union, extend a heartfelt welcome to all of you, our esteemed guests, veterans of the Second World War, and participants of the Arctic Convoys… The Soviet people will always remember the sacrifices of the crews of 58 Allied ships that perished on their way to our ports. May I express my heartfelt and deep appreciation to the Merchant Marine veterans and to their associations, and to all of you who are present at the embassy.”
Each veteran was called forward by name. The seamen, mates, and masters came forward; the radio operators, engineers, and firemen; and the Navy gunners. Each received a handshake and a recognition that had been forty-six years in coming.
Second Group — Late 1991 | Mailed Awards
A second group of 117 confirmed recipients received their medals by mail rather than at a formal ceremony. Among them was Victor J. Konsavage of Perry Hall, Maryland, who had made three convoy trips on Liberty ships between 1943 and 1945. He described the conditions of the run: “It was rough. It was dark all the time, and it was so cold, 15 degrees below zero. It was all frozen. Can you imagine proceeding at 4 or 5 knots in rough seas? Sometimes we had to even steer toward enemy shores.” His package from the Soviet Embassy arrived without warning — the medal on its red moiré ribbon, the Russian citation, the English letter of thanks.
Third Group — 1991–92 | Russian Embassy Compound, Washington, DC
A third ceremony was held at the Russian Embassy Compound near the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC. It was documented in a letter written afterward by Captain John M. Le Cato, who attended as a representative of the Merchant Marine Veterans of World War II, to his colleague E.J. Heins Jr.
Approximately three hundred veterans received medals and certificates. The auditorium and lobby were crowded to overflowing; most veterans had brought spouses, children, grandchildren, and in some cases great-grandchildren. Speeches were cut short to accommodate the numbers. The group was divided alphabetically, the first half receiving awards while the second waited.
On the speaker’s platform with Ambassador Vladimir Lukin were: Captain Warren Leback, Maritime Administrator and himself a Merchant Marine veteran; Ian Millar, who spoke briefly on the significance of the event for both nations; Charles Lloyd, Chairman of the Armed Guard Veterans; George Searle of the Navy League Merchant Marine and Armed Guard Council; Mr. Menshikoff of the Russian Embassy; and the Chaplain of the Seaman’s Church Institute. Le Cato described what followed:
“After the ceremony, I heard more than one child say, ‘I never knew that Grandpa was a hero.'”
The day ended, Le Cato wrote, when he and his friend Jim Risk — a comrade of the “Forgotten Convoy” — raised a glass of the Ambassador’s best vodka and shared the Russian toast: “za vashe zdorovye.”
Baltimore Ceremony — October 1992 | Dundalk Terminal, Port of Baltimore
The first of the two major 1992 ceremonies under the newly constituted Russian Federation was held at the Dundalk Terminal at the Port of Baltimore. Moored alongside the terminal for the occasion was the SS John W. Brown, a WWII-vintage Liberty ship of exactly the type that had carried cargo to North Russia during the war. Two perfectly restored WWII-era Jeeps stood near the gangway, and a number of veterans wore period uniforms.
The invocation was given by Reverend Ramon F. Reno, Chaplain of Project Liberty Ship. The principal speaker was Ambassador Vladimir Lukin of the Russian Federation. Captain Warren Leback, representing the U.S. Maritime Administration, reminded those present of the heroism of all Merchant Marine and Naval Armed Guard veterans. Medals were presented by Yuri Menshikov, Attaché and Public Affairs, and Counsel General Victor Volkov, Chief of the Russian Consulate. President Gorbachev had been expected to attend but was unable to do so; Volkov represented him.
One by one, veterans’ names were called and they came forward. As the last veterans received their decorations, families mingled on the dock, moving out into the warm autumn sunshine — a contrast, as Millar noted, to the frozen Arctic through which so many had passed during the war. A vodka toast was given to those lost at sea and to the continued friendship between the peoples of Russia and the United States. After the ceremony, the John W. Brown was open to visitors.
Washington, DC Ceremony — 8 December 1992 | Russian Embassy Auditorium
The second major 1992 ceremony was held on December 8 at the Russian Embassy auditorium in Washington, DC. Approximately three hundred veterans of the Merchant Marine and Naval Armed Guard were decorated. Charge d’Affairs Andrey Kolosovskiy addressed the veterans and thanked them for their heroic service. Counsel General Victor Volkov then presented each veteran with the medal and a confirming certificate. The invocation was given by Chaplain Barbara Crafton of the Seamen’s Church Institute.
Among the special guests on the stage was Charles A. Lloyd, National Chairman of the US Naval Armed Guard Association — a man for whom this ceremony carried a particular personal weight, as will be seen below.
Millar, who was present, described what he witnessed as the last veterans came forward: many were finding long-lost shipmates given up for dead years before. A hug and a tear, he wrote, brought them back from those trying times when they had stood in the icy blast against a most determined enemy.
| Date | Location | Recipients | Key Individuals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 31 January 1991 | Soviet Embassy, Washington, DC | 56 | Sergi Chetverikov; Ian Millar |
| Late 1991 | Mailed to recipients | 117+ | Soviet Embassy, Washington |
| 1991–92 | Russian Embassy Compound, Washington, DC | ~300 | Amb. Vladimir Lukin; Capt. Warren Leback; Ian Millar |
| October 1992 | Dundalk Terminal, Baltimore (SS John W. Brown alongside) | ~200 | Amb. Vladimir Lukin; Victor Volkov; Capt. Warren Leback |
| 8 December 1992 | Russian Embassy Auditorium, Washington, DC | ~300 | Andrey Kolosovskiy; Victor Volkov; Charles A. Lloyd |
This table reflects only ceremonies documented in the primary sources consulted. Total recipients across all phases, including 50th and 60th anniversary medals, numbered in the thousands.
The Men
The documents preserved from this program are rich in individual stories that give human texture to numbers and ceremonies.
Lonnie Whitson Lloyd
Bosun’s Mate Second Class Lonnie Whitson Lloyd, a North Carolina sailor, made the Murmansk Run aboard the SS Expositer as a member of the Naval Gun Crew. His letter home — already quoted — captures in a few sentences the dependency of the Armed Guard on the merchant seamen, and the dependency of both on sheer survival. He outlived the convoys but was later lost in the sinking of the collier Blackpoint off the Rhode Island coast.
His medal was awarded posthumously. At the December 8, 1992 ceremony in Washington, when the name Lonnie Whitson Lloyd was called, his brother Charles A. Lloyd stepped forward to accept it — Charles being, at that moment, the National Chairman of the US Naval Armed Guard Association and one of the men seated on the stage. A photograph of Lonnie Whitson Lloyd in naval uniform, published in Millar’s Sea Classics article, shows a young man in Navy dress blues, the very image of what war takes.
Captain Peter J. MacPherson
Captain Peter J. MacPherson, born in Ullapool on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, made multiple crossings from Scotland to Murmansk. He served aboard rescue ships that pulled survivors from the icy sea, often under fire, and his stoicism about the experience was complete. At the Baltimore ceremony he received his medal from Victor Volkov. He later shared his assessment of the vodka toast with Millar: “They gave a vodka toast, but there was barely enough vodka to wet the bottom. Luckily, a number of others who didn’t drink poured their vodka into my glass, so in the end I was able to toast with a respectable shot of vodka.” Captain MacPherson died on July 14, 2006, at the age of ninety.
Russell Krenciprock
Russell Krenciprock was a young member of the Naval Armed Guard aboard a Liberty ship making convoy runs to North Russia. His words, preserved in Millar’s Sea Classics account, capture the mental discipline required to function under those conditions:
“We all had a job to do and we had to get on with it. At times, things happened so quickly that you did not have time to be frightened. It was not until later that you realized you were in Hell.”
Krenciprock is photographed in the December 1991 Sea Classics article wearing his Russian medal — one of the earliest published images of an American Merchant Marine or Armed Guard veteran wearing the Soviet decoration.
Captain Dan Goodman
Captain Dan Goodman, then Third Officer aboard the Liberty ship Robert Enden sailing from New York to Murmansk, recounted an episode that stayed with him. During the voyage the ship’s doctor reported seven men dead of injuries or exposure and asked Goodman to have the bodies put overboard quickly to prevent demoralization among the survivors. Goodman assigned four crewmen to the task. Afterward, a seaman who had just been relieved from the wheel stopped him and said: “Hey, Mate, there’s a bunch of guys out laying on deck with no clothes on. You better get them inside or they’ll freeze to death.” Goodman replied: “They already have.”
The Problem of the Record
For researchers, the most significant limitation of this program is unambiguous: no complete, publicly accessible list of American recipients has ever been compiled or published. Millar stated this plainly in his February 2020 correspondence: “I do not know of any published list of medal recipients but I do know that the number would be in the thousands.”
Unfortunately, a 2021 query to the Russian Embassy regarding the number of recipients remains unanswered.
It should also be noted that the 40th Anniversary Medal was not the end of the program. The Russian Federation issued jubilee medals for the 50th and 60th anniversaries, and many recipients of the original award automatically qualified for them as well. Separately, the Russian Federation has continued awarding the Medal of Ushakov to surviving Arctic convoy veterans in more recent years — a distinct decoration with its own award process.
Millar’s final assessment of the program, written in 2020 as the last of the veterans were passing from the scene, was characteristically unsentimental:
“It’s all water over the dam now, soon there will be none of the veterans left, and if you asked the average person in the street about Murmansk they look back with a blank stare not having a clue what you are talking about. So goes history.”
The bluntness is earned. The obscurity of the Murmansk Run in American public memory is genuine. But the record documents something real: one private citizen, working nights and weekends for years without institutional support or compensation, persuaded a foreign government to honor thousands of American veterans that their own government had spent decades ignoring. And those veterans, stepping forward one by one to receive a medal and a handshake and a word of thanks, experienced something they had never expected.
Captain John M. Le Cato, writing to his colleague after the third-group ceremony in Washington, captured what those moments meant better than any official account could:
“After the ceremony, I heard more than one child say, ‘I never knew that Grandpa was a hero.'”
That is the measure of what was accomplished: not a medal, but a restoration. Men who had been classified as civilians, denied benefits, forgotten by their country, and dismissed for forty years were called by name and recognized, in the presence of their families, for what they had done. A foreign government had done what their own had not.
The Piskarevskoya Cemetery inscription said it in Russian: no one has been forgotten, nothing has been forgotten. For the men who made the Suicide Run, the words were long overdue.
References
“Murmansk Run Veterans Honored by Russia,” by Ian A. Millar. Sea Classics, Vol. 24, No. 12., December 1991.
“Remembering ‘The Suicide Run’ to Murmansk,” by Ian A. Millar. Sea Classics, Vol. 26, No. 4., April 1993.
“Man Nets Seamen Their Just Honors,” by Lex Alexander. Greensboro News & Record, ca. 1993-1995.
Email correspondence, Ian Millar to Ian Watts, 12 February 2020.
Russia: 2020
By Presidential Decree No. 520 of August 21, 2020, the Medal of Ushakov was awarded to 17 US citizens for their part in the Arctic convoys that transported supplies and military equipment to the Soviet Union during the war. The full list of recipients was:
- William Speight Burton
- David Eugene Baker
- Richard Burbine
- Raymond Edward Weigand Jr.
- Leo Joseph Goulet
- Issie Deitsch
- Michael Kemple
- George Henry Koch
- Rolf Erik Christoffersen
- Richard Landolfi
- James Baker North III
- Wallace Leroy Orsund
- Howard William Pfeifer
- Wilbert Frank Rozum
- Hugh Mart Stephens
- Dale Paul Strausser
- Trygve Hansen
These men represented the last known surviving American veterans of the Murmansk Run. The original plan was an in-person ceremony, but COVID-19 scuttled it, so the Russian Embassy mailed the medals instead.
Hugh Stephens — A Special Case
6 November 2020
On November 6, 2020, Captain Hugh Stephens was awarded the medal specifically for his participation in the Arctic Convoy to Murmansk in 1943, during which he sailed aboard the SS John Brown. He received the award directly from President Putin. This appears to have been a separate, direct presentation rather than simply receiving his medal by post; this likely reflected his role on the famous Liberty Ship museum vessel.
DECREE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
On decorating with the State Award of the Russian Federation
For personal courage and valor during World War II, while participating in the Arctic convoys, to award citizen of the United States of America
THE MEDAL OF USHAKOV
HUGH MART STEPHENS,
[Seal of the Office of the President of the Russian Federation]
President of the Russian Federation — Vladimir Putin
Moscow, Kremlin August 21, 2020
George Koch — The Punta Gorda Ceremony
6 February 2021
The most documented post-award public ceremony for any of the 17 recipients was held specifically for George Koch:
On Saturday, February 6th, a ceremony was held in Punta Gorda, Florida to honor WWII Merchant Marine Veteran and AMMV member George Koch, who had received the Ushakov Medal from the Russian Embassy for serving on ships delivering critical supplies to Murmansk. Michael Wooster, President of the Sun Coast Chapter of the U.S. Navy League, served as Chairman. AMMV National President Capt. Dru DiMattia was on scene to represent AMMV. The ceremony was held at the Military Heritage Museum.
Koch, then 92, had received the medal by mail due to COVID-19 restrictions, but the Navy League and AMMV had organized an official ceremony to honor him. Koch said, “I am pleased and honored that I have received that medal. It was very nice of the Russian Federation to give these medals to us, to merchant marines who sacrificed lives to supply the Russians.”
Howard Pfeifer and Mike Kemple — Three Rivers Chapter (Pittsburgh)
Two of the 17 recipients — Howard Pfeifer, 97, and Mike Kemple, 93 — were members of the Three Rivers Chapter of the American Merchant Marine Veterans. The Russian Embassy mailed their medals, and Captain Scott Nowak, treasurer of the local chapter, delivered them personally. There is no record of a formal separate presentation ceremony for these two men comparable to the Punta Gorda event for Koch.
The Diplomatic Silence After 2022
There is no publicly documented evidence of any further Ushakov Medal awards to Americans or US-based ceremonies after early 2021. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 led to severe deterioration in US-Russia diplomatic relations, making additional Russian government medal presentations to US citizens effectively impossible through official channels going forward. The 17 awarded in August 2020 appear to be the final cohort of American Arctic Convoy veterans to receive the decoration.
American Merchant Mariners recieved their medals in red oxblood leatherette cases; the medals came along with a minature version, ribbon bar, and a medal booklette.
References
Russian Embassy Washington (Official Decree Announcement)
Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. — “American Citizens Awarded the Medal of Ushakov”
https://washington.mid.ru/en/press-centre/news/american_citizens_awarded_the_medal_of_ushakov/
copy https://web.archive.org/web/20210413035621/https://washington.mid.ru/en/press-centre/news/american_citizens_awarded_the_medal_of_ushakov/
(Lists all 17 recipients by name; cites Presidential Decree No. 520 of August 21, 2020)
Wikipedia — Medal of Ushakov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Ushakov
SUNY Maritime Press Release, 2021
“Capt. Hugh Stevens Awarded Medal of Ushakov from Russian President Vladmir Putin on Veterna’s Day”
https://www.sunymaritime.edu/news-events/capt-hugh-stephens-awarded-medal-ushakov-russian-president-vladimir-putin-veterans-day
copy https://web.archive.org/web/20210120011113/https://www.sunymaritime.edu/news-events/capt-hugh-stephens-awarded-medal-ushakov-russian-president-vladimir-putin-veterans-day
Washington Times, 16 January 2021
“Russia Honoring Remaining WWII Merchant Marine Vets”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jan/16/russia-honoring-remaining-wwii-merchant-marine-vet/
American Merchant Marine Veterans (AMMV), Official Website
“AMMV Member George Koch Honored at Local Ceremony”
https://ammv.us/ammv-member-george-koch-honored-at-local-ceremony/
UrduPoint / Sputnik, 5 December 2020
“US Veteran Honored to Be Awarded Russian Medal for Participation in Arctic Convoys”
https://www.urdupoint.com/en/world/rpt-us-veteran-honored-to-be-awarded-russia-1105171.html
Military Heritage Museum / Freedom Isn’t Free — Event Announcement
https://freedomisntfree.org/upcoming-events/