She was denied higher awards at the end of the war due to the Soviet Union's unequal treatment of women soldiers.

[2] She returned to duty aboard the Soviet Navy hospital ship Red Moscow, transporting wounded soldiers from Stalingrad to Krasnoyarsk[dubious – discuss].

[4] Boredom caused her to volunteer for front-line service with the marines of the Azov Flotilla; the request was only accepted after she appealed to the government in Moscow.

[1] The unit transferred to the Danube Flotilla, seeing action in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Austria;[1] she ended the war in Vienna.

As well as scouting enemy territory alongside her male colleagues, her work involved treating the wounded and evacuating them to safety.

[2] She won her first medal for valour for participating in the recapture of Temryuk on the Taman Peninsula and was awarded the first of two Orders of the Patriotic War for taking part in the Battle of Kerch.

She single-handedly assaulted a fortified German position, blew up their bunker, killed 20 Nazis, taking 14 prisoners, and treated 17 wounded sailors and helped them get to safety.

She finally received the medal along with the Order of Lenin and Gold Star by a decree issued by President Gorbachev on 5 May 1990 to mark the 45th anniversary of the end of the war.

[2] After the death of Yevdokiya Pasko in January 2017, Demina remained the last living female Hero of the Soviet Union that was a veteran of the Second World War, with the other two being cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya.