5 Roubles Belgrade

Part of the Bank of Russia's long-running "Cities of Military Glory" series, this issue commemorates the liberation of Belgrade in October 1944, when Soviet and Yugoslav Partisan forces drove out the German garrison in five days of urban fighting. The operation was notable for its speed and for the explicit political arrangement brokered between Tito and Stalin that kept the Red Army from establishing a permanent occupation presence in the Yugoslav capital — a concession with consequences that shaped the postwar Balkans.