Moscow Times:
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.
Here.