McCain's Soviet shooter dies

You might remember this post “Soviet officer who ‘shot down McCain’ speaks out” from November, it was the story of Yury Trushyekin, a Soviet military officer who claimed it was his missile battery that knocked John McCain's airplane from the skies above Hanoi during the Vietnam War. According to the folks over at englishrussia.com, Trushyekin passed away a few days ago.

The englishrussia.com story adds a few details to the earlier account, including a claim from Trushyekin that a group of Soviet soldiers actually saved McCain's life, ordering an angry crowd of Vietnamese who had hauled the badly injured McCain from a lake where his parachute landed not to kill him. He also said that he visited McCain several times while he was in the infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison, and that McCain was given a copy of Karl Marx’s writings to read.

None of this is in the official account of McCain's shoot-down over Vietnam, but Trushyekin insisted his story was true up until the end. Trushyekin also said that he was glad McCain didn't win the election because “McCain hates Russia way too much, though I can understand...(why).”