Two deserted paratroopers were eventually killed

Georgy Shpak, the commander of the Russian Air Force presented his condolences to the relatives of the Home Ministry attendants and the citizens, who had been killed by the fugitives from the 31st brigade of the Air Force. Shpak personally condoled in connection with those tragic events: “I am deeply certain that this black page in the history of the Air Force will not make an abyss in the relations between the army and the people.” – said the commander.

The head of the Defense Ministry will soon present the complete report about those events. There were six criminal proceedings instituted on the facts of desertion, murder and stealing the weapon. The files will be united into the single proceedings and the Office of the Public Prosecutor of the Volga-Ural military district will carry out the investigation.

The investigation originally set forth several versions of the events. Pursuant to one of them, the soldiers, who were serving for a fixed period of time, Almaz Shageyev and Mikhail Sukhorukov went to the republic of Tatarstan to get 300 thousand rubles back – the money that someone owed Shageyev. The military men were going to spend the good time with that money afterwards, and probably return to their unit. Another version supposed that Shageyev’s girlfriend found another guy and was going to marry him. Shageyev received a letter about it and decided to do something; his friend agreed to help him. Maybe, the paratroopers were going to make money, selling the stolen weapon and ammunition. It was also supposed that the guys killed all those people being rather drunk. This version does not seem to be true, since the necropsy examination showed no traces of alcohol in the paratroopers’ bodies (Shageyev and Sukhorukov were killed February 4).

As Georgy Shpak said in his interview to the newspaper Izvestia, “the investigation has only one version left – the debt version.” Shpak meant that the reason of the tragedy was the money. But not really the money. Georgy Shpak believes (and this is so true) that “our reality , the propaganda of the fake values in the country exerted the negative influence on the young soldiers, who imagined they were Rambos.” So the state is guilty of that, the politics of the state.

Shpak said that the commander of the 31st airborne brigade, colonel Nikolay Nikulnikov “is a good officer, he bravely served in Chechnya, he is a good commander, but it is impossible to control every soldier personally.” By the way, all those military men, who knew Shageyev and Sukhorukov in person, they all said they could not believe that the guys would do such horrid things, they were not expecting it at all.

Shageyev was killed first. Sukhorukov was trying to flee, but then was reportedly shot too. This is one version. Another one says that Sukhorukov spent the last minutes of his life in a small house, in which he got in, having broken the window. The people in the house fled in fear. The soldiers of the special services found Sukhorukov already dead - he had shot himself in the head.

Sergey Yugov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/02/08/36830.html