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Russian pilot who was missing presumed dead after his plane was shot down three decades ago during the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan has been found alive and wants to come home, Russian military veterans said Friday. “He is still alive. It’s very astonishing. Now he needs help,” the head of the paratroopers’ union Valery Vostrotin told RIA Novosti state news agency. Vostrotin, who heads the Russian side of a Russian-US joint commission on prisoners-of-war and soldiers missing in action, declined to name the pilot for reasons of confidentiality. The man was shot down in 1987 and is likely now to be over 60, the deputy head of veteran’s organisation Battle Brotherhood, Vyacheslav Kalinin, told the news agency, adding that he now wants to come home. He suggested that the pilot could be in Pakistan, where Afghanistan had camps for prisoners of war. RIA Novosti reported that during the course of the war between 1979 and 1989, 125 Soviet planes were shot down in Afghanistan. Whe...

Russian pilot who was missing presumed dead after his plane was shot down three decades ago during the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan has been found alive and wants to come home, Russian military veterans said Friday. “He is still alive. It’s very astonishing. Now he needs help,” the head of the paratroopers’ union Valery Vostrotin told RIA Novosti state news agency. Vostrotin, who heads the Russian side of a Russian-US joint commission on prisoners-of-war and soldiers missing in action, declined to name the pilot for reasons of confidentiality. The man was shot down in 1987 and is likely now to be over 60, the deputy head of veteran’s organisation Battle Brotherhood, Vyacheslav Kalinin, told the news agency, adding that he now wants to come home. He suggested that the pilot could be in Pakistan, where Afghanistan had camps for prisoners of war. RIA Novosti reported that during the course of the war between 1979 and 1989, 125 Soviet planes were shot down in Afghanistan. Whe...

Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, who was poisoned with a nerve agent in Britain, triggering a diplomatic crisis with Russia, has been discharged from hospital, the facility said Friday. “It is fantastic news that Sergei Skripal is well enough to leave Salisbury District Hospital,” Cara Charles-Barks, the hospital’s chief executive, said in a statement. Director of Nursing Lorna Wilkinson said: “This is an important stage in his recovery, which will now take place away from the hospital. “Treating him and the other two people poisoned by this nerve agent, while still providing outstanding care to the other patients who rely on our hospital, has been a huge and unprecedented challenge,” he said. Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who was visiting from Moscow, collapsed on March 4 on a bench in Salisbury in western England where the former double agent lives. Nick Bailey, a police officer who came to assist them, was also hospitalised. He and Yulia Skripal were discharged from hospi...