Oleg Peshkov is a domestic military pilot who died in Syria. He was qualified as a sniper, led the flight safety service in Lipetsk. In 2015, he was sent to participate in hostilities in Syria. In November of the same year, the plane in which he was was shot down by a Turkish fighter. The incident occurred over the city of Turkmenistan. Peshkov along with the navigator Murakhtin managed to eject. But fire was fired at them from the ground. As a result, Peshkov was killed. His colleague managed to escape.
Pilot Biography
Oleg Peshkov was born in the small village of Kosiha, which is located in the Altai Territory. He was born in 1970.
Soon his family moved to Ust-Kamenogorsk, where he received a diploma of secondary education in 1985. Two years later, he became a graduate of the Suvorov School in Sverdlovsk, where he graduated with a silver medal. The next stage was the military aviation school in Kharkov, which he had already graduated with honors.
Military service
Immediately after school, Oleg Peshkov went to serve at an air base in the Kyrgyz SSR. He flew MiG-21 aircraft as an instructor pilot. In 1992, he was transferred to the Amur Region, where he stayed until 1998 in the garrison in the town of Vozhaevka. There he served in the intelligence regiment. Over time, he became a squadron commander in the Primorsky Territory.
In the late 2000s, his career went up. Oleg Peshkov became the head of the flight safety service at the state training center for aviation personnel, which was directly subordinate to the Ministry of Defense.
The hero of our article received higher military education at the Air Force Academy, named after the first cosmonaut of the Earth, Yuri Gagarin. During the entire service he mastered as many as five types of aircraft. Total flew 1750 hours. He had an army specialization in military sniper pilot.
Business trip to Syria
Oleg Anatolyevich Peshkov was sent to serve in Syria in 2015. His last flight took place on November 24th. He went on a combat mission as a crew commander on a front-line bomber. His task was bombing.
Near the Russian-Syrian border, his Su-24 bomber was shot down by an air-to-air missile. The launch was made by an F-16 fighter belonging to the Turkish Air Force. Moreover, the incident occurred on Syrian territory, in the province of Latakia. The crew of the aircraft, consisting of Peshkov and navigator Konstantin Murakhtin, was able to catapult.
However, the pilot Oleg Peshkov was not destined to land alive on the ground. He was fired from the ground by militants. Later, the Turkish far-right organization called Gray Wolves claimed responsibility for the murder of the Russian military. This was officially announced by its leader Alpaslan Celik.
Almost immediately after the murder of Oleg Peshkov, photos and videos with his body were posted on the Internet. On them next to the pilot were radical militants.
Only in March 2016, the militant who committed the murder, together with 14 accomplices, was detained in the Turkish city of Izmir by the local police.
The greatest indignation of the military and civilians was caused by the fact that firing on pilots landing on parachutes was a clear and open violation of one of the fundamental points of the Geneva Convention, which was adopted in 1949. It expressly indicates that no person leaving the aircraft by parachute should be attacked during their entire descent to the ground.
5 days after death, Peshkov’s body was delivered to the morgue of the Turkish province of Hatay. From there it was already sent to Ankara. An autopsy was performed by Russian forensic experts who determined that the death of pilot Oleg Peshkov, whose biography is given in this article, resulted from 8 bullet wounds and multiple hematomas throughout the body.
The fate of the navigator
By happy coincidence, the navigator Murakhtin, flying with Peshkov, was out of the zone of active shelling of militants. Initially, reports appeared in the media that he had been captured. It was later announced that Murakhtin also died in the air. But in reality he was alive.
Russian services began a special operation together with the Syrian units to rescue Murakhtin. It was implemented on the night of November 24 to 25. In total, the operation lasted about 12 hours.
It all started with the fact that in the evening of November 24, it became reliably known that Murakhtin was alive. Then, from the air base located in Khmeimim, two Mi-8 helicopters departed. Soon, one of the helicopters was hit by fire from the ground. Marines Alexander Pozynich, who participated in this operation, died.
At this time, Murakhtin, who safely landed on the ground in the territory controlled by the militants, hid from opponents in the forest for almost a day. The soldiers of the Syrian army managed to find him by the lighthouse that the navigator had with him. The Syrians transported Murakhtin to the Khmeimim airbase from the territory controlled by the terrorists.
The funeral of Peshkov
The coffin with the body of Lieutenant Colonel Peshkov was received by domestic diplomats and representatives of the Ministry of Defense on November 30. First, he was taken to a military hospital in Ankara, and then transported to Russia.
A special flight with a body landed at the Chkalovsky military airfield. Throughout the flight over Russia he was accompanied by an escort from fighter jets.
On December 2, 2015, Peshkov was buried with all military honors in Lipetsk, in the city cemetery.
