A Russian fighter in Vladimir Putin’s war is believed to have taken his own life falling 100ft from a tower block after he was ordered to return the following day to the combat zone.
His mother - a cleaner in the Russian Foreign Ministry - saw tragic Mikhail Lyubimov jump from a window in their 10th floor flat, say reports.
His death comes amid a reported rise in suicides linked to the war which the Russian authorities are “covering up”.
The mobilised man had suffered from “panic attacks” and had started drinking over his feared return to the war, said his mother Natalia, 43, who works in the Foreign Ministry empire of Putin's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov.
Earlier Lyubimov had served as a conscript in the navy, but was drafted as a soldier in the war zone in Ukraine.
He died in Moscow district Tsaritsyno on his first break from the action, a day before he was due to report for another stint at the front.
“Natalia said she saw her son jump out of a window of their apartment on the 10th floor,” said a report..
“The woman rang the police and ambulance, but the man could not be saved.”
When he was sent to the war in October, his longterm girlfriend Ksenia had posted: “You will return.”
Some details have emerged of other men who had taken their lives rather than fight in Putin’s war, yet there are claims that many more such cases have not been publicly revealed.
Vladimir Potanin, 46, from Kurgan, “killed himself with a razor blade” at a training facility in Sverdlovsk region less than one week after he was mobilised.
A man, 28, mobilised from Shushary, Leningrad region, took his own life at a training facility in Vyborg on October 2.
Alexander Ivanov, 57, a mobilised lieutenant from St Petersburg, was found dead in Krupets village, Kursk region, before being sent to the front.
Denis R., 33, a mobilised man from Revda, Sverdlovsk region, took his own life in Belgorod region shortly before he was due to be sent to Ukraine.
Reports also say that refusenik draftees are often held in makeshift prisons from hell close to the war zones, as commanders seek to intimidate them to join the war.
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