Andrei Nikolayevich Paliy, a senior commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, has reportedly been killed while fighting at a Ukrainian port city, two top officials said in a statement.
“Captain 1st Rank Andrei Nikolayevich Paly was killed in the fighting [near Mariupol],” RFE/RL reported, citing a Telegram post by Sevastopol Gov. Mikhail Razvozhayev. The Russian navy has not immediately confirmed the latest military leader’s death.
Sevastopol, a major base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, is located on the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Razvozhayev said Paliy, who was born in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, “died for our peaceful future” as he decided to “defend his homeland as his life’s work.”
In 1993, the military general refused to take an oath of allegiance to Ukraine, remaining loyal to Russia by choosing to serve the Northern Fleet.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine also said in a statement on social media that Paliy was killed by Ukrainian forces during intense fighting at the strategic port city of Mariupol.
NTD News could not independently verify the officials’ claims.
On Monday, Ukraine parliament member Dmytro Gurin said that Mariupol had been destroyed by bombardments, adding that the death toll there was impossible to determine.
“There is no Mariupol anymore. They bombed everything. … We have to build this city from scratch,” Gurin told Sky News via video link from Kyiv.
“We have official numbers from my mayor’s office, about 2500 people died during this time. But [that counts] only the bodies that we collected on the streets, not more. And we don’t know how many people are dead and burned alive in these apartments and died from bombing and from artillery strikes in this building,” he said.
If confirmed, Paliy’s death would mark the latest fatality among top Russian military officials since the war, which Moscow calls a “special military operation,” started nearly one month ago.
Earlier this month, Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, the deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Russian Ground Forces, was killed during a special operation in Ukraine, Russian outlet Pravda reported citing a social media post by Sukhovetsky’s comrade-in-arms Sergey Chipilev.
Several days later, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said in a brief statement that a second deputy commander, Maj. Gen. Vitaly Gerasimov of the 41st Army of the Central Military District of Russia, was killed during fighting in a city in northeast Ukraine.
At least 902 civilians had been killed in Ukraine as of March 19, the U.N. human rights office (UNHCR) said, adding that the real toll could be higher. The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said 112 children had been killed.
Ukraine’s military claimed on March 20 that Moscow’s combat losses included 14,700 personnel and 476 tanks. Russia last acknowledged on March 2 that nearly 500 of its soldiers had been killed. NTD News could not independently verify either casualty number.
Reuters contributed to this report.