Senior Sailor Oleksandr Otrepiyev, a serviceman with Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade, was killed in action on Jan. 21, becoming the second Ukrainian fatality in Russia’s war in Donbas in 2021.
Ukraine’s Marine Forces Command reported that he was shot and killed by an enemy sniper.
The 28-year-old Otrepiyev is the 6th confirmed combat-related fatality since Ukraine’s leadership declared yet another armistice with Russian-backed militants on July 27.
Oleksandr Otrepiyev, a Ukrainian marine killed in action in Donbas on Jan. 21, 2021.
Despite the ceasefire being touted by President Volodymyr Zelensky as the longest and most stable de-escalation of hostilities since the war’s outbreak in 2014, sporadic splashes of fighting along the frozen 420-kilometer front line keep claiming the lives of Ukrainian soldiers.
As recently as Jan. 11, Ukrainian soldier Oleh Andriyenko of the 56th Motorized Infantry Brigade was killed in action in the abandoned front line town of Pisky, close to the ruined Donetsk Airport, becoming the first combat-related fatality of 2021.
As of the evening of Jan. 22, the Ukrainian military reported four ceasefire violations in the previous 24 hours, with no fresh casualties sustained.
In all, nearly 4,000 Ukrainian military service members and paramilitary volunteers have been killed in action in Russia’s war in Donbas since 2014.
