MOSCOW – A Russian pilot who was missing presumed dead after his plane wasshot down three decades ago during the Soviet intervention in Afghanistanhas been found alive and wants to come home, Russian military veterans saidFriday.
“He is still alive. It s very astonishing. Now he needs help,” the head ofthe paratroopers union Valery Vostrotin told RIA Novosti state news agency.
Vostrotin, who heads the Russian side of a Russian-US joint commission onprisoners-of-war and soldiers missing in action, declined to name the pilotfor reasons of confidentiality.
The man was shot down in 1987 and is likely now to be over 60, the deputyhead of veteran s organisation Battle Brotherhood, Vyacheslav Kalinin, toldthe news agency, adding that he now wants to come home.
He suggested that the pilot could be in Pakistan, where Afghanistan hadcamps for prisoners of war.
RIA Novosti reported that during the course of the war between 1979 and1989, 125 Soviet planes were shot down in Afghanistan.
When Soviet troops pulled out in 1989, around 300 soldiers were listed asmissing. Since then some 30 have been found and most returned to their homecountries.
Kommersant business daily reported that only one Soviet pilot was shot downin 1987, naming him as Sergei Pantelyuk from the southern Russian Rostovregion, who went missing along with his plane after taking off from Bagramairfield, now a US air base, north of Kabul.
The head of a local veterans organisation said that his mother and sisterare both alive.
Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid also traced Pantelyuk s 31-year-old daughterwho was born months before her father went missing.
Senator Frants Klintsevich told RIA Novosti that this was far from the onlysuch case. He said that he had met a former Soviet soldier on a trip toAfghanistan a few years ago who refused to give his name and spoke Russianwith difficulty and said it was too late for him to go back.
Former Soviet soldier Bakhretdin Khakimov, who was interviewed by AFP in2015, was one of those who opted to remain in Afghanistan. He was seriouslywounded and was nursed back to health by local people and then converted toIslam.
He told AFP: “I stayed in Afghanistan because Afghans are very kind andhospitable people.” – APP/AFP