A memorial in honor of Russian military nurses Nadezhda Durachenko and Galina Mikhailova, who died in Aleppo, Syria in 2016, was opened at the Khmeimim airbase.
On December 5, 2016, a Russian mobile military hospital in Aleppo, where civilians were being treated, came under artillery fire. Nurses from Birobidzhan Durachenko and Mikhailova were killed. The Russian Defense Ministry regarded the incident as a planned murder and blamed it on the armed Syrian opposition and its backers in the West.
"On the territory of the medical detachment, we have installed a monument to sergeants Nadezhda Vladimirovna Durachenko and Galina Viktorovna Mikhailova, who tragically died while performing military duty in the city of Aleppo... By opening this monument, we express our deep gratitude to all those who honorably perform their military duty in the Syrian Arab Republic," Lieutenant General Alexander Chaiko, commander of the Russian forces group in Syria, said at the opening ceremony of the memorial.
The memorial was opened to the accompaniment of a military band. In honor of the victims, a gun salute was given, and flowers were laid at the memorial. A black stone installed in the park on the territory of the airbase is engraved with portraits of the nurses, their dates of birth and death.
As the head of the special purpose medical unit, Lieutenant Colonel of the medical service Ahmed Abdulkadyrov told reporters, the initiative to install the monument belongs to colleagues of the deceased nurses.
"The entire staff of the medical unit participated in the construction of this monument, without receiving any additional funds from the side. And the initiative was supported by all the people in the squad, " he said.
Abdulkadyrov noted that the installation of a monument to the killed colleagues was a common duty of all Russian military medics serving in Syria.
"In 2016, our squad was here, at the Khmeimim. We met this group, and then we accompanied them to Aleppo to complete their tasks. Two days later there was a tragedy - these two nurses were killed in Aleppo," he said.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Marina Lystseva / TASS
Based on materials from RIA Novosti