Soviet officer who 'shot down McCain' speaks out

There's at least one person who is glad that John McCain lost the election earlier this month - a former Soviet officer who claims that he was the one who shot McCain down in Vietnam.

Russia's RIA Novosti recently talked to Yury Trushyekin, who said that he was operating an anti-aircraft missile battery in Hanoi the day McCain was shot down. Though it's never been officially acknowledged by any government involved in the war, some Soviet soldiers (including Trushyekin apparently) are said to have served with the Communist North Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War. It was a similar arrangement to the one the Soviet Union had during the Korean War when veteran Soviet pilots flew MiG jet fighters for Communist North Korea (during the Korean War Soviet pilots went so far as to wear civilian clothes while flying in case they were shot down so they wouldn’t be tied to the Soviet Union).

In the interview Trushyekin said a North Vietnamese squad shot at McCain's plane first, but missed. His crew then shot, and hit, McCain's F-4 Phantom, bringing it down.

"It's good that he didn't become president. Even in the camp they said how he really hated Russians, as he knew it was our missile that shot him down," Trushyekin said. "Russian-American relations would have suffered."