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Remains of missing Soviet military pilot presumably discovered in Vietnam

A group of local enthusiasts resumed the search for the missing Russian and Vietnamese pilots last year

HANOI, September 30. /TASS/. Remains presumably belonging to Soviet military pilot Yuri Poyarkov, who has been listed as missing for 47 years, have been discovered in Vietnam, organizers of the search told TASS.

"Today, during a search expedition in the mountainous region of Tam Dao, the remains of two pilots were found, including, presumably, those belonging to Capt. Poyarkov," a search participant told TASS.

Soviet Air Force Capt. Poyarkov, born in 1933, was serving as a military instructor in Vietnam during the 1955-1975 Vietnam war. He went missing on April 30, 1971 while performing a joint training flight with a Vietnamese pilot on board a Soviet MiG-21S supersonic jet fighter-interceptor. The contact with the aircraft was lost and it went off radar screens. It was presumed that the plane crashed in a remote area of Vietnamese jungle.

A group of local enthusiasts resumed the search for the two missing pilots last year, following a request from the Soviet officer’s granddaughter, Anna Poyarkova.

The search party established that the plane crashed after reaching the destination of the test flight, when it was already returning to the base. The searchers outlined an approximate search area, and found a fragment of the crashed plane there last summer.

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