The Russian defense ministry has confirmed the suicide of a contract serviceman at the Himym airbase in Syria, RIA Novosti reported.
Advertisement
The Defense Ministry said Kostenko was serving as a ground technician at a Russian airbase called Hmeymim, near the Syrian city of Latakia on the Mediterranean coast, where the majority of Russia’s forces in the country are based.
The Syrian-American Medical Society, which operates several facilities in Syria, said Thursday that nine Russian air strikes have hit hospitals or field clinics.
“It was either a provocation aiming to lower the image of the Russian Federation in the eyes of the global community by suggesting that our military servicemen are going to the territory of a foreign country to fight”, he said.
Previously, reports of Russian deaths in Syria had been unconfirmed.
The Gazeta.ru report said that 20 troops, including officers and contracted soldiers, were selected from a military unit of Russia’s Eastern military district command and sent on a mission without being told about the final destination.
Alexander, Vadim’s father, said: “We were told he had hanged himself because of a girl”.
“According to preliminary investigation, including the analysis of SMS in his phone, the death of the contractor was caused by the problems in his personal relationships with a girlfriend”, the Ministry of Defense said, according to Russia’s state-controlled news agencies.
Grigory Donskikh, who served with Kostenko in Russian Federation and knows him well, confirmed his death but said he did not know how he died.
The funeral would take place on Wednesday.
“We remember, we love, we grieve”, a young woman identified as Katya Kostenko, Vadim’s sister, wrote on her page, alongside a photo of a uniformed soldier clutching a Kalashnikov.
The death may test how Moscow explains military deaths to the public.
Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted a source in the defence ministry’s press service confirming the death. According to the ministry, he was there as a military adviser to Syrian soldiers.
Russian Federation began airstrikes in Syria September 30, saying they would target the Islamic State militant group, also known as ISIS, to prevent the group from attacking Russian Federation.
While Russia had admitted to its one lone death in Syria, to date there have been no official tallies or remarks on Russian losses in Ukraine.
“It was either an illness or trauma”, Krivenko, the head of the Citizen and the Army group, told AFP.
When Russia lost troops during recent fighting in neighboring Ukraine, where the Russia covertly supported separatist militias, Moscow first claimed the soldiers had died in training exercises on Russian soil or denied they were active-duty troops, and even held secret burials of the dead.
Advertisement
Russia’s entry into the multi-front conflict in Syria is Moscow’s first major military involvement outside the former Soviet Union since the occupation of Afghanistan in 1979.
