RussianPilot

I'd like to take a chance and tell you about one of the pilots. His picture is in the center of the monument. His name is Konstantin Pavlukov. He was born in Siberia, in the place called Barnaul. He went to the Barnaul Air Force academy (class of 84) and later checked out in the SU-25. He was ordered to Afghanistan in October 1986. He flew 70 sorties in the SU-25 as the attack or CAS pilot. In the evening on the 21st of January 1987 (4 months in combat) he was a wingman (2 of 2) on the flight that had a task of "clearing" the green shrub area to the W-NW of the Bagram Airfield. This was a routine procedure before a cargo airplane/s would takeoff or land. With the arrival of the Stinger missle in 1986 the russian air force started taking heavy losses and the SU-25's or helis would patrol at least the close to the airports areas looking for enemy during heavy departures or arrivals. As Kostya's flight took off, while making a downwind turn, his aircraft was hit by a stinger. Kostya ejected. While descending he was shot at from all over the shrub area and most likely wounded. As soon as he landed he unpacked the combat pack – thank goodness our Wing Commander Aleksander Rutskoy had common sense to order to throw out the stupid floating rafts and put gun, ammo and a few grenades in the combat pack in the ejection seat that is tied to the pilot's shute harness. Kostya engaged a group of probably around 20-30 mujahideen. They wanted to take him alive, but he fought until running out of ammo, for 30-40 minutes. This was taking place only 1.5-2 kilometers form the airfield. I don’t know why the rescue was so ineffective. Kostya was heavily wounded. When a group of the enemy approached him he detonated a hand grenade in his hand.. He remained a soldier to the end. Kostya was 23 years old.

This is not exactly true. The monument was discovered by US troops in 2006 with the move to Bagram. It had no pictures, no writings and the aircraft model was missing too. The structure was damaged. The locals said that when the russian troops were pulling back in 1989 they took all of that home and mined the area. The locals also mentined that the monument was not a grave - the pilots either went down with their airplanes or were sent home to be burried there. The soldiers of the US engineering unit worked on the structure and made a model of the aircraft. Some guys spent their own time and money and wanted to fully restore the monument. This had coverage in the world press. The Afghanees had a fit with it because they don't like russians very much and this was their soil, rented out to the US. On the 22-nd of February 2007 the russian ambassador Kabulov visited the base and asked for the remains of the monument to be moved to the grounds of the russian embassy in Kabul, but he said "we don't have any means of arranging this". The remains of the monument were moved to the south-east, closer to the sovier era buildings. They are basically a conrete wall and the tank fuel tanks filled with concrete as the foundation. This had to take place because the decision was made to build a new runway to the SE of the existing one and the monument was too close to the site. The russian press picked up this story and described it as "the yanks blew up soviet pilots graves".