Serhiy Viktorovych Kokurin (russian: Сергей Викторович Кокурин, uk, Сергій Вікторович Кокурін; 1 January 1978 – 18 March 2014) was a Ukrainian soldier who was shot dead by a sniper during the assault on the Ukrainian military base in

Simferopol Simferopol () is the second-largest city in the Crimean Peninsula. The city, along with the rest of Crimea, is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine, and is considered the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. However, it is ...

. He was the first soldier killed during the Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation.

Biography

Serhiy Kokurin was born on 1 January 1978 in

Crimean Oblast During the existence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, different governments existed within the Crimean Peninsula. From 1921 to 1936, the government in the Crimean Peninsula was known as the Crimean Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic; ...

(

Ukrainian SSR The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic ( uk, Украї́нська Радя́нська Соціалісти́чна Респу́бліка, ; russian: Украи́нская Сове́тская Социалисти́ческая Респ ...

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

). On 28 December 1997 he pledged his allegiance to the Ukrainian people. During his military service Kokurin went from private to warrant officer and was the chief of his unit's logistics service. On 18 March, Kokurin was killed on watch duty during the Russian assault on the 13th Photogrammetric Center of the Central Military Topographic and Navigation Main Directorate of Operations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to the Russians, he was killed by a sniper, and a sniper from the same location also killed one rebel (Ruslan Kazakov) and wounded another. The Ukrainian government insists that the sniper was a soldier of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Kokurin was survived by his wife, son, and unborn child, all of whom relocated to Odessa.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kokurin, Serhiy 1978 births 2014 deaths People from Simferopol Deaths by firearm in Ukraine Ukrainian people of Russian descent People of the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation Ukrainian military personnel killed in the Russo-Ukrainian War People murdered in Ukraine