Vadim Kostenko: Russian soldier kills himself during deployment in Syria

It is the first known death of a Russian serviceman in Syria since Moscow began airstrikes in support of President Assad

Kostenko had signed up to become a contract soldier with the 906th Close Air Support Regiment (Reuters)

A Russian soldier has killed himself while on deployment in Syria, the first known death of a Russian serviceman in Syria since Moscow began its airstrikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad last month.

The relatives of Vadim Kostenko, a 19-year-old contractor in the Russian army, said that officers from a military airfield in Russia’s Krasnodar region had visited them with news that Kostenko had died on 24 October, activists from the open source investigative organisation Conflict Intelligence Team reported.

Kostenko’s cousin and a former colleague confirmed the report to Russian business newspaper RBK, adding that Kostenko’s body hadn’t been delivered home to his family. Kostenko will “soon” be buried in his home region of Grechanaya Balka, CIT reported.

The press service at Russia’s Ministry of Defence has not commented on Kostenko’s death so far, but Dmitry Peskov, the press spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said this morning that the question over the soldier’s death had been forwarded to the foreign ministry.

“I’d prefer to leave this subject with my colleagues at the Foreign Ministry,” Mr Peskov told journalists.

Kostenko had signed up to become a contract soldier with the 906th Close Air Support Regiment in June this year after finishing his draft in the army, CIT reported. However, it is not thought that Kostenko himself was a pilot.

While relatives await confirmation on the nature of his death, a friend of Kostenko's told activists from CIT that officers from the military had changed their version of Kostenko's death more than once when talking to his relatives.

Friends have been posting condolences on Kostenko’s page on Russian social networking site VKontakte, with one friend writing, “Brother, we’ll never forget you, we’ll remember, love and mourn for you.”

A report from Reuters on 20 October quoted a senior Syrian pro-government source claiming that three Russians had been killed alongside their Syrian counterparts in Latakia. However Russia’s foreign ministry denied the claim, slamming the report as unproven and “part of an information war”.