Retired Russian colonel is freed in Afghanistan after a month in captivity
imago / Xinhua / Scanpix / LETAAfghan security guards in Herat, January 2019 Retired Colonel Alexander Lavrentyev, a member of Russia’s Cross-Agency P.O.W. Commission, spent a month in captivity in Afghanistan, the officer’s friends told the news website RBC . On March 26, 2019, Lavrentyev arrived in the province of Herat on an expedition to find and identify the remains of Soviet soldiers who went missing during the USSR’s war in Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989.