MOSCOW: Russia’s shock over the military plane clash that killed 92 people became all the more acute when Yelizaveta Glinka, a renowned doctor and charity worker, was on the doomed flight’s passenger list.
The diminutive 54-year-old woman, affectionately known as “Dr. Liza”, had boarded the same military flight to Syria as more than 60 members of the famed Red Army Choir, who were on their way to entertain troops stationed at the Hmeimim base Moscow uses to launch airstrikes in the war-scarred country.
But Glinka’s objective was neither musical nor military. She was on a mission to deliver medication to a university hospital in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia.
Since Sunday’s crash Muscovites have been laying flowers and candles in front of the headquarters of Fair Aid, the charity she founded in 2007 to care for the homeless, terminally-ill patients and abandoned pensioners in Russia which often offers little support to vulnerable social groups.
