The Belarusian Aviation Colonel Shot Down in Eastern Ukraine Identified

A resident of Lida was shot down with a Stinger along with a Russian general.

The dead pilot who took part in Russia's war of aggression was a 67-year-old retired pilot from Lida, who had learned to fly in Chernihiv, Flagstaff reports.

Information about the death of the pilot from Belarus first appeared in the Posmotri Brekhnya telegram channel on 18 May:

"The funeral of a retired RB aviation colonel was reportedly held yesterday in Lida. According to unconfirmed reports, he was shot down the other day in Donbas, where he was a pilot of a Russian Air Force fighter jet."

Yesterday, the information about the pilot's death was confirmed by Ukrainian military blogger Anatoliy Shtefan. In his channel, which now specialises in fixing Russian military losses in Ukraine, he provided a fragment of correspondence on a Russian pilots' forum. The correspondence and data from the page in one of the social networks can reconstruct the biography and circumstances of the pilot's death.

The dead pilot was Nikolai Markov, born in 1955 in the Novgorod region of Russia, graduated from the Chernihiv Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots in 1976. He served in the Soviet Air Force in Kazakhstan, East Germany, Postavy and Lida in Belarus, where he was a regimental navigator. He worked in Africa. According to the information, Markov published on his page in "My World" social network, he indicated Lida as his home town. He got a house and a second family in one of the African countries.

How did the 67-year-old military pensioner get to the Ukrainian front? Russian aviators explain it by a shortage of pilots in the Russian air force and report that Markov was flying "from some PMC" (private military company).

Information about the pilot's death emerged on May 12. The Su-25 attack aircraft was shot down at an altitude of 1,500 metres, presumably from a Soviet S-125 surface-to-air missile system over Popasna (Luhansk Region, Ukraine). Markov was the wingman during the paired flight, the lead commander was "retired general" Kanamat Botashev, 63, who died there 10 days later - 22 May - from a Stinger hit over Popasna.

Markov was buried on 17 May in the Novy cemetery in Lida. The state media did not report the incident.