Is “dead” Russian admiral Viktor Sokolov alive?

Russian video purports to show Sokolov, lower left, participating in a meeting [Screengrab from YouTube]

Russia’s Defense Ministry has released video purporting to showing the Commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Viktor Sokolov, participating via a video link in a Russian Defense Ministry board meeting, said to have taken place today.

As we reported yesterday, a number of Ukrainian sources reported that he had been killed in a devastating missile strike on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet on September 22.

Today, several analysts have cast doubts on the credibility of the video footage, not least about when it was shot.

Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform reports that the special operations forces SSO of the Armed Forces of Ukraine “are verifying information regarding the destruction of the commander of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation, Viktor Sokolov.”

“As you know, 34 officers were killed as a result of a missile attack on the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation. Available sources claim that the commander of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation was among the dead. Many of them have not yet been identified due to the disparity of body fragments,” Ukrinform reports the SSO as saying in a post on its Telegram channel.

The SSO added that since the Russians were urgently forced to publish a response with an apparently alive Sokolov, special forces units are clarifying the information.