Deputy Commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet Andrei Palii was killed in fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces near Mariupol, Ukraine, Russian officials said on Sunday.
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“Andrei Nikolayevich Palei was killed in the fighting to liberate Mariupol from the Ukrainian Nazis,” Mikhail Razvojayev, the governor of Sevastopol, wrote on Telegram.
This city on the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, annexed in 2014 by Russia, is the home port of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
According to Mr. Razvojayev, Andrei Palii, a “real officer from a military dynasty” who enjoyed “great authority over the Russian fleet”, perished on Saturday in clashes around Mariupol, a strategic port city in the south eastern Ukraine besieged by the Russian army for several weeks.
According to Russian media, Andrei Palii was in 2020 deputy commander of Russian forces in Syria, where Russia has been intervening militarily since September 2015 in support of the forces of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.