Leonid Slutsky spoke about the last dream of the deceased military commander Boris Maksudov

Military correspondent Boris Maksudov, who worked on the Rossiya 24 TV channel, has passed away. Not far from the village of Mirny in the Zaporozhye region, the Ukrainian Armed Forces fired at a group of journalists with fragmentation ammunition from a drone. Boris was seriously wounded. On the morning of November 23, while being transported to the Dzhankoy hospital, his heart stopped. His friends and associates spoke about how they remembered Boris.

On his page on the social network, Boris Maksudov shared his sore points, noting that the most valuable thing in a combat zone and at the same time devalued are human lives and human destinies.

“I have little interest in all these guns, guns, tanks, planes and other killing toys,” noted Boris Maksudov. “They’ve been scaring me lately.” Since I saw with my own eyes what they lead to.

I am alarmed by the chronic and diabolical interest in all these things of people who have nothing to do with military operations. And I admire the humanity and seriousness of those who work with these weapons.

Paradox. The closer to the front, the more humanity there is. That’s what I tried to discern in the heroes of my materials.”

Boris Maksudov was from Uzbekistan, from Nukus. He studied at a small school No. 16 at a military unit on the outskirts. This was the last school in the city where teaching was in Russian.

“An amazing fragment of a destroyed empire, the last outpost of the USSR in the vastness of a new country,” said Boris. — They taught from Soviet textbooks, without reference to the standard curriculum. Soviet teachers of the old school remained at the school, and it was for their sake that the children were placed there.”

There was no longer a school bus, like in Soviet times. Boris had to walk five kilometers back and forth every day.

“I still remember this piercing icy wind in winter and the sweltering heat that came with spring,” the journalist shared.

He returned to his homeland 23 years after his family moved. Of all the antiquities of Uzbekistan, the most precious to him were a bench with a table in the yard of his childhood. They were once the center of life in a small courtyard. Here they told the latest news and played backgammon. They even slept on the table when the heat in the concrete boxes of the Khrushchev buildings became unbearable. On the cracked boards he tried to make out the inscriptions that they had once made with the neighboring boys…

After school, Boris entered Sochi State University at the socio-pedagogical faculty, studying Russian and foreign literature. He could have become a good teacher, everyone noted his teaching talent, but journalism was closer to him. Boris was from a journalistic dynasty; his grandfather and mother were famous journalists.

As colleagues note, Boris was a born reporter. Very responsible, thoughtful, efficient.

In 2005, he began working at the Sochi State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, then headed the Sochi bureau of New Kuban Television. He was his own correspondent for the TV Center channel. Then he became a correspondent for the Rossiya 24 TV channel.

With the start of the special operation in Ukraine, he prepared reports from the front lines. He talked about the shelling of Donetsk; children, doctors, and teachers died before his eyes. Some were covered in shrapnel at work, others died on the way to the store.

“The apparent calm is just self-deception. If they don’t fire at the center, it rumbles on the outskirts,” Boris noted. “It’s just that in the center of such a beautiful city this barbarity looks especially terrifying.”

Rossiya 24 viewers saw his reports from Mariupol. Boris told how the city was being restored.

“As colleagues and comrades-in-arms, we communicated with Boris in Donbass,” says State Duma deputy, chairman of the LDPR Leonid Slutsky. “He was a smiling, well-mannered guy. A professional reporter, a very caring person, who was meticulous in his work and covered events truthfully. I went to the “hottest” destinations without fear.

Leonid Eduardovich recalls that he and Boris discussed the situation at the front many times, and together thought about how to help the soldiers.

“Boris shared the opinion of the guys on the front line, he knew what they needed. He helped us assemble humanitarian convoys so that they included what was truly needed and necessary.

Boris, without hesitation, responded to our proposal to organize a “School for Young Military Correspondents.” He was interested in teaching young people the basics of the profession. He planned to develop his own direction for training young journalists. And he believed that the main thing for a military correspondent is to show the truth.

Leonid Slutsky notes that together with Maksudov they worked on the initiative to award military officers the title of combat veteran.

“Now we will seek a solution to the issue of the status of military journalists in memory of Boris. This is, of course, a big loss for all of us. War takes the best. Borya was a good man, a real hero,” says the deputy.

Boris headed the media department at Synergy University and was the author of an online course on military journalism. Instructing students, he said that it was important to keep a cool head and treat any news with a grain of salt.

Friends and colleagues express their condolences to Boris’s family and loved ones.

Read the material “Death of the Brave: which journalists died in the Donbass and in the Northern Military District zone”