‘Russian Rambo’, hero of Kremlin’s Syria war, buried

A special forces officer killed in Syria, nicknamed the “Russian Rambo” by state media, was buried on Friday in a blaze of publicity and pomp, with the Kremlin allowing blanket TV coverage as an exception for 25-year-old Alexander Prokhorenko.

The senior lieutenant — whose media nickname refers to John Rambo, a fictional Vietnam veteran — had called in a strike on himself in March near Palmyra after being encircled by Islamist fighters, his commanders say.

Russia has been keen to stress its role in helping the Army in Syria retake the ancient Syrian city by providing airstrikes guided by special forces troops like Prokhorenko but has at times been reluctant to admit its military losses there.

It staged a concert in the city’s Roman amphitheatre on Thursday evening to underscore its involvement.

A school and a street are due to be named in Prokhorenko’s honour and President Vladimir Putin posthumously gave him the Hero of Russia award, the country’s highest military medal for his “courage and heroism”.

It took weeks to retrieve and identify Prokhorenko’s body, and he was buried in his home village of Gorodki, about 1,200 km east of Moscow.

“Kurdish militia squads took part in getting Alexander Prokhorenko’s body out,” a representative of the Syrian Kurds in Russia, Farkhad Patiev, told state TV at the funeral.

State TV showed a black coffin draped in a Russian flag withan officer’s cap perched on top being carried by eight soldiers in full uniform with a guard of honour of five more servicemen.