At the close of the war, the Berlin Zoo area came under the jurisdiction of the British Zone of Occupation. In 1946, British soldiers discovered Saturn, and brought him to Leipzig, then part of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, where they gave Saturn to the Soviets. Because the Moscow tourism office burnt down in the 1950s, the exact details of how Saturn came to Russia are unknown, but the Red Army transported Saturn, along with an Indian python, to Moscow in July 1946, bringing him to live in the Moscow Zoo. When the alligator arrived there, he instantly became a popular attraction, as there were only two crocodiles at the zoo and no other alligators. His German origins earned him the nickname 'Hitler', but he was later given the name 'Saturn'. When Russian tanks were moving down the Garden Ring during the 1993 constitutional crisis, Saturn cried out because of the vibrations, which a zookeeper thought reminded him of the Battle of Berlin.