Russian Black Sea Fleet’s Top Marine Dies After Being Wounded in Combat

Yan Sukhanov, a top marine with Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, has died after sustaining injuries in combat in Ukraine, an official announced on Monday.

Sukhanov, the chief of staff of the 810th Separate Guards Naval Infantry Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet, “was wounded in Mariupol” and has been buried after developing an illness, Mikhail Razvozhaev, the Kremlin-installed governor of Crimea’s Sevastopol, said in a post on his Telegram channel.

Razvozhaev didn’t elaborate on when Sukhanov was injured in Mariupol. The port city became the scene of intense clashes in May 2022 when Russian forces led a three-month siege on the Azovstal steel plant. It was shelled for weeks while Kyiv’s troops were holed up inside.

Russian forces currently occupy Mariupol, a strategic port city on the Azov Sea that forms part of a land corridor from the eastern Donbas region—which borders Russia—to Crimea.

Sukhanov was “wounded in Mariupol. During treatment in a hospital in Moscow, doctors diagnosed another insidious disease, which did not allow the body to cope with [his] injuries,” said Razvozhaev.

“Since February 24, 2022, he was in the special operation zone in Ukraine. Under his leadership, the 810th Brigade took part in the battles for Mariupol and took control of Azovstal,” he wrote. “His colleagues say that one can only dream of such a commander.”

The Centre for Strategic Communications (StratCom), a Ukrainian NGO, said in May 2022 that Sukhanov had been “seriously wounded” after an artillery strike on the command post of the 810th Separate Guards Naval Infantry Brigade, which is in Sevastopol, Crimea. It isn’t clear if Sukhanov’s death was linked to the injuries he reportedly sustained that strike.

Newsweek has contacted Russia’s Foreign Ministry via email for comment.

Razvozhayev said Artem Klyagin, another soldier of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s 810th Separate Guards Naval Infantry Brigade, was killed in Ukraine’s Kherson region.

The soldier “signed a contract and was sent to serve in the 810th Marine Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet. When leaving, he told his mother: ‘I will return as a hero!’.”

“He heroically died…saving the lives of his comrades, trying to evacuate the wounded from under fire,” Razvozhayev added.

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet has sustained significant losses throughout Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv is ramping up attacks as part of an offensive that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hopes will lead to its liberation. Zelensky has vowed to reverse Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Experts close to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry previously told Newsweek that Kyiv is embarking on a strategy to “demilitarize” the Black Sea Fleet as part of steps toward eventually liberating the peninsula.

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