MOSCOW, Russia
The commander of an elite Russian airborne unit has been killed in Ukraine, a Kremlin-backed military official in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region said Sunday.
Alexander Khodakovsky, who
serves as deputy national guard commander of the self-proclaimed
Donetsk People’s Republic, announced the death of Russian Colonel Andrei
Kondrashkin on the messaging app Telegram, adding that the killed colonel headed
the 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade.
Khodakovsky did not disclose
the circumstances of the airborne commander's death.
However, Yurii Butusov,
founder of Ukraine’s censor.net news website, said Kondrashkin died while
trying to repel a Ukrainian attack near the captured town of Bakhmut.
Without disclosing his
sources, Butusov said Ukrainian assault forces had breached the defenses of
Kondrashkin’s unit in the village of Andriivka, located near the key frontline
town of Bakhmut.
“The elimination of one of
Russia’s strike formations’ commanders is a serious achievement,” Butusov wrote
on Telegram.
Ukraine’s military said it
had retaken Andriivka last week, while Russia’s Defense Ministry maintained
that Kyiv was “trying in vain to dislodge Russian troops” from the village.
Kondrashkin is at least the
second commander of the 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade to be killed in Ukraine
since the February 2022 invasion.
His predecessor, Colonel
Sergei Karasev, was among the dozens of the unit’s paratroopers who died in the first few days of the war when it
tried and failed to capture the town of Hostomel outside Kyiv.
Nearly 2,000 Russian
paratroopers, including 340 officers, have died in the nearly 19-month invasion
of Ukraine, according to
a tally by the independent outlets Mediazona and BBC’s Russian-language
service.
Moscow has been reluctant to
release official casualty figures, leaving independent media to collect data
from the disparate local media reports, obituaries, and cemeteries.
Russia’s independent news
outlet Sota, citing anonymous sources, said Kondrashkin
commanded the 31st brigade for “just a few days.”
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