Award Certificate for a Defense of Odessa Medal, Series N, #09235. Shows an ink stamp of the Military Commissariat of the Krasnodar Territory and is hand-signed by Administrative Service Colonel Borisov.

Award Certificate for a Defense of Sevastopol Medal, Series I, #12161. Shows an ink stamp of the Military Commissariat of the Krasnodar Territory and is hand-signed by Administrative Service Colonel Borisov.

Both documents were issued on the same day of 24 October 1944. Both are in very good to excellent condition, which is outstanding for a single-p

Award Certificate for a Defense of Odessa Medal, Series N, #09235. Shows an ink stamp of the Military Commissariat of the Krasnodar Territory and is hand-signed by Administrative Service Colonel Borisov.

Award Certificate for a Defense of Sevastopol Medal, Series I, #12161. Shows an ink stamp of the Military Commissariat of the Krasnodar Territory and is hand-signed by Administrative Service Colonel Borisov.

Both documents were issued on the same day of 24 October 1944. Both are in very good to excellent condition, which is outstanding for a single-page WW2 campaign medal certificates - especially those as scarce as the Defense of Odessa or Sevastopol. The documents have been folded for storage but have practically none of the usual separations along the fold lines. There are just a couple of tiny tears and clips on the edges of the Sevastopol document, none of them really detractive; the edges are otherwise free of wear. Both certificates are clean, showing only a light age toning and a couple of very faint, barely noticeable fingerprints, no stains, significant soiling or foxing. A superb set overall!

So far, only very scant information about the recipient could be found on the Russian archival websites. According to them, Leonid Robinov was born in 1922 in the city of Kherson, Ukraine. At some point, he worked as a crewman of the steamer Kreml, a 350-passenger riverboat built in the late 1930s at the Petrozavod shipyard. Starting from 1940, the boat was making regular scheduled trips connecting Leningrad with nearby locations such as Kronshtadt and Zelenogorsk.

Although Robinov is referred to as a civilian crewman of the Kreml, he in all likelihood participated in the defense of Odessa and Sevastopol in some other capacity, as the Kreml apparently remained in Leningrad area for much of the Patriotic War, marooned there with the rest of the surviving merchant ships and warships of the Soviet Baltic Fleet and steamship companies. Based on information found online, the riverboat resumed scheduled trips in the Leningrad area after the war. In the meantime, Robinov found himself in the Krasnodar Region in 1944 soon after its liberation by the Red Army and, according to the Russian archives, was awarded with the Odessa and Sevastopol Medals in October of that year. At the time, he was still a civilian. Unfortunately, the archival notes do not shed light on what exactly his role was in the 1941-42 epic battles for the two port cities on the Black Sea. We can only assume that having experience as a sailor, Robinov was enlisted to help in the seaborn supply and evacuation missions - an arduous and dangerous task. In any case, it is highly uncommon to see a group of two documents to a veteran of both of these early defensive campaigns, especially a civilian!
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