Putin awarded the Order of the American General, who adopted two children from Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin, by his decree, awarded two Americans with Orders of Friendship. One of the gentlemen of the Order, Lieutenant-General of the US Air Force Thomas Patten Stafford, at one time adopted two children from Russia.

Photo: The Russian America

The official wording of the reason for the award is “for his great contribution to the development of cooperation in the field of astronautics between the Russian Federation and the United States of America,” reports The russian america.

Lieutenant-General of the US Air Force Thomas Patten Stafford, who became a holder of the Order of Friendship in the beginning of the 2000s, together with his wife adopted two boys from Russia - Michael and Stanislav. And one of his grandchildren bears the name Alexey - in honor of the Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, with whom Stafford has friendly relations.

In space, Stafford himself visited four times (in 1965 – 1975), spent in orbit around the 21 day. In 1969, he was the commander of the Apollo-10 spacecraft - put him into the lunar orbit and conducted successful tests of the descent vehicle for disembarking a man. In 1975, he commanded another Apollo, which made docking in near-earth orbit with the Soviet Union-19. In 2011, Stafford, by presidential decree Dmitry Medvedev, was awarded the medal "For merits in space exploration of foreign citizens."

Another recipient is retired US Marine Corps Major General Charles Frank Bolden, who completed four space flights totaling more than 1986 days between 1994 and 28. His first two flights were as pilot of the space shuttles Columbia (1986) and Discovery (1990), and his next two as commander of the space shuttles Atlantis (1992) and Discovery (1994). Bolden's final flight included Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev on the shuttle crew for the first time.

In 1994, Bolden left NASA and returned to service in the aviation of the US Marine Corps, which, in 1972 – 1973, participated in combat operations in Vietnam. In 1998, Bolden was promoted to the rank of Major General, he retired in 2004, and in the year 2009 was appointed head of NASA. In this post, Bolden remained until the beginning of 2017.

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