Fonsini, the Russian major did what any of us was doing when we flew near to where hot lead was flying about
: trying to polish the turd the politicians dumped on some place by the means he was trained in.
As to the Russians: As most who post here, I am an old Cold Warrior and grew up with the Soviets as the foe. It was nice to see the Cold War end. I am of the opinion that the Americans and Russians missed a fantastic chance to stop being nasty to each other in the early part of the War on Terror, between about 2001 and 2008, since we have/had a common goal of putting down Islamists and terrorists. When the US went for the "put the Republic of Georgia into NATO" gambit, I consider it a turning point of roughly where we lost the plot. We certainly have our geostrategic differences, but there have been chances to make better efforts at using common problems as a point of building a better relationship.
We can't seem (the both of us) to get out of our own ways.
I tried to find a link to a song I'd like to dedicate to this major, but youtube sadly does not have this one up anywhere. It's from a Deutsche grammophon record I heard years ago. I ended up taping it onto a 90 minute cassette tape in the 1970's. That tape now and again still get played. A capella songs, male chorus, in Russian as I recall.
In German, it's called
Lied Vom Braven Major
In English, it is "The Song of the Brave Major"
In French it's something like "Chanson du vaillant major"
(Heh, that album cover
here is the one I remember....
Don Kosaken Chor Serge Jaroff – Russische Lieder Und Chöre
Genre:
Classical )