London - A navigator from the Russian jet downed by Turkey pledged on Wednesday night to keep flying missions over Syria ‘to pay back’ those who killed his commander.
Captain Konstantin Murakhtin spoke for the first time after he was rescued by special forces in a daring 12-hour mission behind enemy lines.
His Su-24 jet was blitzed out of the sky by two Turkish warplanes on Tuesday, before he was shot at by Turkmen rebels as he parachuted to the ground. His comrade Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Peshkov was killed by machine-gun fire after ejecting from the plane.
His dead body was surrounded by rebels chanting ‘Allahu Akhbar’ - Arabic for ‘God is great’. Captain Murakhtin managed to avoid the shots and upon landing fled from the rebels. He spent the rest of the day changing position and hiding in a forest by the Turkey-Syria border. When night fell, he used his emergency radio beacon to let the Russians military know he was alive and give them his location.
An 18-man Syrian special forces team, with six members of an elite Hezbollah unit, ‘penetrated terrorist-held areas’ and worked throughout the night to find him, it was said.
Russian special forces were also said to have been involved in the operation, which returned Captain Murakhtin ‘alive and well’ to the Russian Hemeimeem air base in Syria, where he received medical attention.
Speaking from the base, 30 miles from the border, he said: ‘There was no warning by radio exchange nor visually. There was no contact at all. The Turks did not get in touch with us.’
The Turkish government said they sent ten warnings in five minutes.
Captain Murakhtin added: ‘We were flying at about 6,000-metre [19,700ft] altitude. The weather was sunny … All the flight before the moment when the missile exploded was completely under my control. I could clearly see with the map and visually where the borders were and where we were.’ He claimed there ‘wasn’t even a threat of entering Turkish airspace’ because the crew knew the region ‘like the back of their hand’.
‘If they wanted to warn us, they could have showed themselves by flying at a parallel course,’ he added.
‘But there was nothing - and the missile hit the tail of our plane all of a sudden. We didn’t see it visually to have enough time to do an anti- missile manoeuvre.’
Captain Murakhtin is appealing to his commanders to allow him to remain in Syria. He said: ‘I can’t to return [to flying] … I have a debt to repay to the commander.’ The airman told Russian TV that he wanted to keep flying missions from the base to ‘pay them back for my commander’.
Russian military expert Vladislav Shurygin said the Turks had been ‘catching’ Russian planes for days, and when the Russian jets took off, they were be accompanied by up to six Turkish F-16s in the air.
He said the missile fired from one of the Turkish jets hit the engine of the plane and both of the pilots ejected. Colonel Peshkov, 52, was shot dead in the air by rebels on the ground. Disturbing footage shows the pilot, still wearing his seat belt, covered in blood and bruises after being captured by Turkmen. The rebels claimed they had also shot dead Captain Murakhtin.
But he survived after landing in an area covered by forest, Mr Shurygin said, adding: ‘It gave him some advantage and he managed to escape from the place where he landed before a group of Islamists arrived.
‘All day long, gangs of militants were checking the area searching for a Russian aviator but couldn’t find him … An active radio exchange began which means that Turkish interceptors immediately passed the information about the aviator’s location to the militants … When it got dark, several of our SWAT teams went to the area, as did a Syrian SWAT operating in this area.’
Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu confirmed the rescue operation was successful and had ended 3.40am Moscow time on Wednesday.
He said: ‘[Captain Murakhtin] has arrived at our base and is alive and well. He thanked “all our guys, who worked through the night at huge risk to themselves”.’
A military source from the Syrian government said: ‘Special operations units from the Syrian Arab Army conducted on Wednesday night a special operation in which it penetrated areas where the terrorists are present and was able to rescue one of the pilots of the Russian plane.’
President Vladimir Putin said of the surviving airman: ‘He and all those who participated in this operation, including the rescue mission, will receive state awards.’
Colonel Peshkov was posthumously named a Hero of Russia, the country’s highest military award. Captain Murakhtin has been awarded the Order of Courage.
Alexander Pozynich, a Russian marine killed in the rescue operation, was posthumously award the Order of Courage. He was killed inside a helicopter searching for the two pilots, which was shot down by an anti-tank missile fired by the Free Syrian Army, US-backed rebels.
His widow Irina, 28, mother of their four-year-old son, said: ‘It’s very painful… I don’t understand how and why it happened. It feels like it happened to someone else.’
Daily Mail