Vyacheslav Fedchenko watched in horror as a Stinger missile fired by Afghan mujahedin struck a Su-25 fighter jet and the pilot, Konstantin Pavlyukov, parachuted out high above the Bagram Air Base.
"It was so close to Bagram that everyone saw it," said Fedchenko, who was at the base at the time. "The worst thing is that we couldn't get to him."
Helicopters attempting to rescue Pavlyukov faced fierce enemy ground fire, leaving the pilot to pull his final maneuver, one that would later earn him the posthumous award of Hero of the Soviet Union.
"He blew himself up with two grenades when they tried to capture him and took the bandits with him," Fedchenko said by telephone from Barnaul, in the Altai region.
Pavlyukov was shot down in January 1988, and later that year Fedchenko and other Soviet soldiers stationed at Bagram completed a monument to Pavlyukov and four other fallen pilots that featured a wooden carving of Pavlyukov's Su-25.
The monument was abandoned after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan the following year. But in a strange twist of fate, it may soon be reconstructed by soldiers from the country that armed the Afghan mujahedin with the Stinger that brought down Pavlyukov's plane.
The U.S. military is considering restoring the monument near the Bagram Air Base, 50 kilometers north of Kabul, after three U.S. soldiers stationed at the giant Soviet-built base appealed for it to be saved from demolition.
The soldiers, U.S. Air Force Sergeants David Keeley and Raymond Ross and U.S. Army Sergeant Tom Clark, last month began work to salvage the crumbling monument. And though the three have apparently been ordered to stop their efforts, the U.S. military is now considering how to proceed and "trying to find an appropriate way to restore the monument," said a spokeswoman with the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
In postings on the web site Airforce.ru, Keeley had been chronicling plans to restore the monument. But the postings stopped abruptly, and the web site's administrator received an e-mail from Keeley saying he had been ordered to stop work.
Keeley did not respond to an interview request last week, but in his postings on Airforce.ru, he took pains to explain to Russian online visitors that he had only good intentions.
"No matter if history is good or bad, it must be preserved," Keeley said in a Sept. 15 post. "Ray, Tom and I are 'soldiers,' like the five pilots honored by the memorial. I would hope another soldier would honor us as we honor these five men."
In a Sept. 20 post, Keeley said he was seeking official permission to save the memorial. "Once it is saved, it will be protected as long as Americans are here," he said.
But the following day, Keeley wrote that the military intended to bulldoze the area.
Then, last week Sunday, Airforce.ru creator Dmitry Sribny wrote in the forum that Keeley had e-mailed him to say that, for political reasons, he had been ordered to cease all actions related to reconstruction of the monument and to stop posting on the site's forum.
The U.S. Embassy spokeswoman confirmed the site had been scheduled for demolition and clearing, but said a decision would likely be made this week on what to do with the monument. She said she had no information on whether Keeley had been ordered to stop his work and cease speaking publicly about the project.
Sribny, a former air defense officer who set up the Airforce.ru web site in 1998, called the restoration effort a "noble act."
"The Soviet pilots died carrying out orders from their country, and now Americans and coalition soldiers are dying there," Sribny, currently a software architect based in the Netherlands, said by e-mail. "Soldiers who die for their country deserve to be remembered."
Sribny said the restoration of the monument could help improve relations between Russia and the United States, pointing to several posts in Russian Internet forums.
"I've changed my mind about Americans," one forum user identified only as Airwolf wrote. "Thank you, David."
Another forum user wrote that his "eyes became wet" when he heard about "such good people."
"Even among Americans, most of whom I dislike," he wrote.
Fedchenko called Keeley and his fellow soldiers "great guys who are doing a good thing."
According to Fedchenko, who completed two tours in Afghanistan from 1986 to 1989, construction of the monument was a team effort by members of his Air Force regiment stationed at Bagram. "We had a lot of creative people there: artists, writers, painters, woodworkers," Fedchenko said. "So anybody who had some free time would help out."
The airplane model atop the concrete wall was fashioned out of wood -- no other materials were available -- by a pilot still flying in the Stavropol region, while a self-taught artist stationed nearby used photographs scrounged up from military papers to paint the oil-on-wood portraits of the pilots, Fedchenko said.
"We took the portraits with us when we pulled out in 1989 because we didn't want to leave them for the mujahedin," he said.
Originally, the monument was dedicated to four pilots -- Lieutenants Pavlyukov, Igor Alyoshin and Vladimir Paltusov and Captain Yaroslav Burak. But space was made later for a fifth spot on the monument wall for Lieutenant Viktor Zemlyakov, who was killed Sept. 13, 1987, Fedchenko said.
The possible restoration of the monument would not be the first example of the United States honoring fallen Soviet servicemen. In 1974, the bodies of Soviet sailors were buried at sea aboard the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a ship built for a covert CIA operation to recover a sunken Soviet submarine lost in 1968. The CIA filmed the ceremony, and a video was handed over to Russia in the 1990s.
U.S. actions in Afghanistan in the 1980s were less generous toward the Soviet Union. The CIA provided Stingers, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, to the Afghan mujahedin, who used them to shoot down hundreds of Soviet aircraft.
Shortly after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Pentagon officials acknowledged that some of the Stingers might have fallen into the hands of al-Qaida or Taliban militants -- the very people that U.S.-led forces are now fighting in Afghanistan.
Fedchenko said he saw no irony in U.S. soldiers restoring a monument to Soviet pilots shot down by Islamic militants that the United States had armed.
"Regardless of the political situation, all soldiers are the same: They fight to defend their government," he said.
"It was so close to Bagram that everyone saw it," said Fedchenko, who was at the base at the time. "The worst thing is that we couldn't get to him."
Helicopters attempting to rescue Pavlyukov faced fierce enemy ground fire, leaving the pilot to pull his final maneuver, one that would later earn him the posthumous award of Hero of the Soviet Union.
"He blew himself up with two grenades when they tried to capture him and took the bandits with him," Fedchenko said by telephone from Barnaul, in the Altai region.
Pavlyukov was shot down in January 1988, and later that year Fedchenko and other Soviet soldiers stationed at Bagram completed a monument to Pavlyukov and four other fallen pilots that featured a wooden carving of Pavlyukov's Su-25.
The monument was abandoned after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan the following year. But in a strange twist of fate, it may soon be reconstructed by soldiers from the country that armed the Afghan mujahedin with the Stinger that brought down Pavlyukov's plane.
The U.S. military is considering restoring the monument near the Bagram Air Base, 50 kilometers north of Kabul, after three U.S. soldiers stationed at the giant Soviet-built base appealed for it to be saved from demolition.
The soldiers, U.S. Air Force Sergeants David Keeley and Raymond Ross and U.S. Army Sergeant Tom Clark, last month began work to salvage the crumbling monument. And though the three have apparently been ordered to stop their efforts, the U.S. military is now considering how to proceed and "trying to find an appropriate way to restore the monument," said a spokeswoman with the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
In postings on the web site Airforce.ru, Keeley had been chronicling plans to restore the monument. But the postings stopped abruptly, and the web site's administrator received an e-mail from Keeley saying he had been ordered to stop work.
Keeley did not respond to an interview request last week, but in his postings on Airforce.ru, he took pains to explain to Russian online visitors that he had only good intentions.
"No matter if history is good or bad, it must be preserved," Keeley said in a Sept. 15 post. "Ray, Tom and I are 'soldiers,' like the five pilots honored by the memorial. I would hope another soldier would honor us as we honor these five men."
 airforce.ru The memorial as it is today. U.S. Air Force pilots want the monument restored and protected by coalition troops. |  |
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In a Sept. 20 post, Keeley said he was seeking official permission to save the memorial. "Once it is saved, it will be protected as long as Americans are here," he said.
But the following day, Keeley wrote that the military intended to bulldoze the area.
Then, last week Sunday, Airforce.ru creator Dmitry Sribny wrote in the forum that Keeley had e-mailed him to say that, for political reasons, he had been ordered to cease all actions related to reconstruction of the monument and to stop posting on the site's forum.
The U.S. Embassy spokeswoman confirmed the site had been scheduled for demolition and clearing, but said a decision would likely be made this week on what to do with the monument. She said she had no information on whether Keeley had been ordered to stop his work and cease speaking publicly about the project.
Sribny, a former air defense officer who set up the Airforce.ru web site in 1998, called the restoration effort a "noble act."
"The Soviet pilots died carrying out orders from their country, and now Americans and coalition soldiers are dying there," Sribny, currently a software architect based in the Netherlands, said by e-mail. "Soldiers who die for their country deserve to be remembered."
Sribny said the restoration of the monument could help improve relations between Russia and the United States, pointing to several posts in Russian Internet forums.
"I've changed my mind about Americans," one forum user identified only as Airwolf wrote. "Thank you, David."
Another forum user wrote that his "eyes became wet" when he heard about "such good people."
"Even among Americans, most of whom I dislike," he wrote.
Fedchenko called Keeley and his fellow soldiers "great guys who are doing a good thing."
According to Fedchenko, who completed two tours in Afghanistan from 1986 to 1989, construction of the monument was a team effort by members of his Air Force regiment stationed at Bagram. "We had a lot of creative people there: artists, writers, painters, woodworkers," Fedchenko said. "So anybody who had some free time would help out."
The airplane model atop the concrete wall was fashioned out of wood -- no other materials were available -- by a pilot still flying in the Stavropol region, while a self-taught artist stationed nearby used photographs scrounged up from military papers to paint the oil-on-wood portraits of the pilots, Fedchenko said.
"We took the portraits with us when we pulled out in 1989 because we didn't want to leave them for the mujahedin," he said.
Originally, the monument was dedicated to four pilots -- Lieutenants Pavlyukov, Igor Alyoshin and Vladimir Paltusov and Captain Yaroslav Burak. But space was made later for a fifth spot on the monument wall for Lieutenant Viktor Zemlyakov, who was killed Sept. 13, 1987, Fedchenko said.
The possible restoration of the monument would not be the first example of the United States honoring fallen Soviet servicemen. In 1974, the bodies of Soviet sailors were buried at sea aboard the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a ship built for a covert CIA operation to recover a sunken Soviet submarine lost in 1968. The CIA filmed the ceremony, and a video was handed over to Russia in the 1990s.
U.S. actions in Afghanistan in the 1980s were less generous toward the Soviet Union. The CIA provided Stingers, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, to the Afghan mujahedin, who used them to shoot down hundreds of Soviet aircraft.
Shortly after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Pentagon officials acknowledged that some of the Stingers might have fallen into the hands of al-Qaida or Taliban militants -- the very people that U.S.-led forces are now fighting in Afghanistan.
Fedchenko said he saw no irony in U.S. soldiers restoring a monument to Soviet pilots shot down by Islamic militants that the United States had armed.
"Regardless of the political situation, all soldiers are the same: They fight to defend their government," he said.