The deputy commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Andrei Palii, was killed in fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces near Mariupol (Ukraine), Russian authorities reported on Sunday.
“Andrei Nikolayevich Palii died in the fighting to liberate Mariupol from the Ukrainian Nazis,” Mikhail Razvojaev, governor of Sevastopol, wrote in Telegram.
This city on the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, is the base port of the Russian Black Sea fleet.
According to Razvojaev, Andrei Palii, an “open and honest man”, a “true officer of a military dynasty” who had “great authority over the fleet”, died on Saturday in the clashes to take Mariupol, a strategic port city in southeastern Ukraine that has been under siege by the Russian army for several weeks.
PUBLICIDAD
According to Russian media, Andrei Palii was deputy commander of Russian forces in Syria in 2020, where Russia intervened militarily since September 2015 in support of the forces of the Bashar al-Assad regime.
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