Leader of the Soviet partisan movement in western Russia and Ukraine.

In August 1941, Dmitry Medvedev, a seasoned operative of the state security bodies, took charge of the Mitya operational group operating in the Smolensk, Bryansk and Mogilev regions. Here he not only conducted around 50 major operations, but also created the prerequisites for the emergence of a so-called partisan territory - an extensive liberated area behind enemy lines firmly in the hands of partisans.

From June 1942, Medvedev became the permanent commander of a special-purpose partisan detachment named the Pobediteli (The Victors), which was dropped into Western Ukraine. The formation included members of the Separate Special-Purpose Motorized-Rifle Brigade as well as Spanish anti-Fascists who had settled in the USSR after the defeat of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War.

Apart from destroying enemy personnel and objects of military infrastructure, Medvedev's partisans hunted down high-ranking Nazi officials and Wehrmacht generals (the Pobediteli notched up 11 such bigwigs). In December 1942 a group of detachment members commanded by intelligence agent Nikolai Kuznetsov organized a successful ambush of officers of the German HQ and learnt the location of Hitler's general headquarters on the Eastern Front - the Werwolf bunker was not far from the city of Vinnitsa (Vinnytsia) in Central Ukraine.

In early 1944 the Pobediteli rendered assistance to advancing Red Army units in the large-scale battle for Right-bank Ukraine (i.e. the area west of the River Dnieper), and the detachment was disbanded in October of that year. After Victory, Dmitry Medvedev was sent to Lithuania, where his wealth of experience proved useful in combating the local opponents of Soviet power known as the 'Forest Brothers'.