It was attached to the 10th Army in the Bialystok area[1] and was under the command of Major General Mikhail Khatskilevich when Operation Barbarossa began in June 1941.

[3] On 22 June 1941, the 6th Mechanized Corps consisted of 32,382 men, 1,131 tanks, 242 armored cars, 162 artillery pieces, 187 mortars, 4,779 vehicles, 294 tractors and 1042 motorcycles.

Without adequate ammunition and with many tanks in a state of disrepair and sent to several different locations without fuel reserves, they were quickly immobilized.

[7] The corps dissipated soon without any other combat, with negligible losses to aircraft, and with distance traveled that hardly necessitated any fuel tanking or repairs.

[5] The corps dispersed on 27 June near Krynki, with the personnel retreating east in small groups, and the equipment being abandoned or destroyed en masse.

By 25 June 1941 General Heinz Guderian's 2nd Panzergruppe reached Slonim and Vawkavysk and cut off the retreat of the greater part of the 10th and 3rd Armies at Białystok encirclement.

Guderian's "pincer" reached Minsk on 27 June trapping the greater part of 13th and 4th Armies in another encirclement west of the city.

Major General of Armored Forces Semyon Ilyich Bogdanov was appointed the commander of the 6th Mechanized Corps.

On December 18, 1942, 6th Mechanized Corps was assigned to the 2nd Guards Army of the Southern Front, where it was involved in stopping the onset of Operation Winter Storm.

On January 8, 1943, the Corps – participating in the counterattack – captured the Zimovniki station (Rostov Oblast), a vital point of the Luftwaffe's munitions supply chain.

[citation needed] The Corps participated in the Battle of Kursk, as a part of 5th Guards Tank Army.

[9] Alongside other units, it fought in the southern part of salient against the elite 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf and drove them out of Belgorod.

[citation needed] Later in 1944 the 5th Zimovnikovsky Guards Mechanized Corps fought in Moravia and Upper Silesia.

On May 8, 1945, the 10th Mechanized Brigade of the Corps was the first to enter the Czech capital, for which the unit received the Prague honorific.

From the time of its reassignment to the 53rd Guards MRD, it was based at Kushka, Mary Oblast in the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic.

A battalion of the 56th Guards Air Assault Brigade had taken control of the Rabat Mirza pass on 26 December, between Kushkov and Herat.

[12] On December 26 at 7:20 pm, the commander of the 5th GMRD, Major-General Yuri Shatalin, gave orders to cross the Afghanistan border.

The 373rd Guards Red Banner Order of Kutuzov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky Motor Rifle Regiment, had formed part of the division on its arrival in the country.