KHATLON, Tajikistan -- Tajik authorities say a Tajik national has been killed while fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
A prosecutor’s assistant in the southern Khatlon region, Anvar Nazarzoda, told reporters on January 8 that the man, a native of the city of Qurghonteppa, Murodali Barfiev, was killed recently.
He said Barfiev had joined the pro-Russian separatists, who hold portions of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, last year.
It was the first time Tajik authorities have said a Tajik citizen was fighting in Ukraine.
Last month, a court in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan sentenced a Kazakh citizen, Yevgeny Vdovenko, to five years in prison for fighting in Luhansk -- also alongside the separatists.
Kazakh and Tajik laws bar citizens from taking part in military conflicts abroad.
