Novaya Gazeta reported on Wednesday, the day that Vadim’s funeral is due to take place, that Vadim’s body was in a poor state.
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But family and friends said they would never believe the young soldier had taken his own life.
Alexander and Svetlana Kostenko said their son had sounded cheerful over the phone as recently as Saturday, the day he died while working at an air base on the Syrian coast.
Russia’s Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office on Wednesday said in an online statement that a medical examination of Kostenko’s body had confirmed the cause of death as suicide, but said an investigation had been opened to determine “all the circumstances surrounding his death”. “We saw his nose and jaw were broken, he had marks on his neck”, Yekaterina Kostenko told AFP inside the family home, a brick house at 102 Soviet Street, before the funeral.
Kostenko was one of the Russian air force’s support staff.
On September 30, Russian Federation launched its bombing campaign in Syria, with President Vladimir Putin saying Moscow needed to target Islamic State militants. In recent weeks several times in violation of Turkish airspace for Russian Federation, believing that they deliberately made Turkey and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation had seen a strong response from.
The source said the serviceman was a technician that had committed suicide while he was resting after duty. “Preliminary information, including gathered from text messages on his mobile phone, suggests the serviceman’s death was prompted by difficulties in his personal relationship with a girl”.
The ministry did not respond to written questions from Reuters. He couldn t have killed himself for a girl.
Local residents said a priest had visited the family home but had refused to carry out a blessing because the official cause of death was suicide, Reuters reported – a theory hotly contested by Kostenko’s relatives.
Musienko painted a picture of her nephew as someone who was enthused by serving in the military, saying Kostenko had nursed ambitions to train as a pilot.
According to the report, the recommendations, which come at US President Barack Obama request and still need his formal approval, a limited number of Special Operation forces would be put on the ground in Syria and advisers would be sent closer to the frontlines in Iraq. His body was handed over to his parents on Tuesday, making him the first confirmed military fatality of Russia’s 4-week-old bombing campaign.
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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.
