The German Reichstag was planted by the Soviet Union with photos.

It was Mikhail Minen, a Soviet hero, who first planted the Red Army flag in the Parliament Building in Berlin.

It is worth noting that this famous photo of "Victory Flag Inserted into the Empire State Building" originally published in Pravda of the former Soviet Union was later fabricated, and it was not Minen who waved the flag in the photo. On May 2nd, yevgeny Khaldei, a 28-year-old Soviet war photographer, was ordered to take a news photo of the Soviet flag with five stars, a hammer and a sickle, because the reporters embedded in the army failed to capture the moment when the Red Army planted the flag on April 30th. Khaldei took his Leica camera, a Soviet flag and two Red Army soldiers, Abdul Hakim ismailov and Mikhail Yegorov, to the burnt-out parliament building and took 36 photos with a whole roll of film. The published photos were also post-processed: the black smoke in the background was later made on the negative film, which made people feel that the war was still going on. The soldier is wearing a stolen watch on both wrists. When the photo was published, the watch was scraped off the negative by Khaldei with a needle.

In order to cooperate with the photo publicity, the official text reported that Red Army Staff Sergeant Kontha Leah and Ye Gerloff took the lead in planting the flag of the former Soviet Union in the Capitol with sickles and axes. This marks the end of the great Soviet Patriotic War and the final victory of the anti-fascist allies in the European battlefield in World War II. The "victory flag inserted into the Empire State Building" later became a symbol of the Red Army's victory over Nazi Germany. This photo was included in every textbook in Germany and became the collective memory of both Germany and Russia.