Moskalenko was born in the village of Grishino, Bakhmutsky Uyezd, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire (now in Pokrovsk Raion, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine), into a family of Ukrainian peasants.

When the province of his village was seized by the troops of the Volunteer Army of General Anton Denikin, he hid because of the threat of execution.

Later, he graduated from the advanced training courses for the command personnel at the Red Army Artillery Academy in Leningrad and the faculty of advanced training for the higher command personnel of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Military Academy in Moscow Oblast.

[2] During the Soviet-Finnish War, he was the commander of artillery for the 51st Rifle Division and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

[4] When Operation Barbarossa began in June 1941, Moskalenko was the commander of an anti-tank brigade which was stationed in Lutsk.

During this time, he took part in the defensive battles in Lutsk, Volodymyr-Volynskyi, Rovno, Torchyn, Novohrad-Volynskyi and Malyn.

Moskalenko participated in the Kiev Strategic Defensive Operation and fought in battles near Teterev, Pripyat, Dnieper and Desna.

The 6th Army under the command Moskalenko took part in the Barvenkovo-Lozovaya offensive and the liberation of the cities of Izium and Lozova.

At the very beginning of the defensive period of the Battle of Stalingrad, the 1st Tank Army attacked the enemy almost continuously for twelve days in a row and held back their advance.

Moskalenko was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for heroism and courage when crossing the Dnieper and securing a bridgehead on its western bank.

Another version states that Beria was shot by machine gun during the military assault on his residential compound in Moscow.

During the war, I'd given a high recommendation of him to Stalin because Moskalenko was a devoted to the defence of our country, and he wasn't a bad soldier.

[8]Khrushchev also claimed to have been shocked by the virulence with which Moskalenko denounced Marshal Zhukov in 1957, when Khrushchev had decided to sack Zhukov, but even so, he remained in office until April 1962, when he was dismissed without any reason being given, and was made an Inspector General of the Ministry of Defense, an honorary post of no significance.

It is a safe bet that a man anxious to preserve his equipment intact could not have been happy at the prospect of having his most secret weapons shipped with nuclear warheads to a highly exposed site such as Cuba.

[9]For his services in the development and strengthening of the Armed Forces of the USSR, he was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for the second time on 1978.