Vladimir Kazantsev

Vladimir Kazantsev (; 1953 – 17 December 2001) was a Russian Airborne Forces major general who held multiple senior posts. From 1997 to 2000 he was Deputy Commander of the Airborne Forces for Peacekeeping Forces, and from 2000 to 2001 he commanded the Russian military contingent in Kosovo. He was supposed to become Deputy Commander of the Airborne Forces for Combat Training, but shortly after his return to Moscow from Kosovo, he died by falling from his apartment building.

Biography Vladimir Kazantsev was born in 1953 and served in the Soviet Airborne Forces (VDV). He was a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan War and, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the First Chechen War. He rose to prominence in October 1996, when he was removed from his position in the Russian Airborne Forces by President Boris Yeltsin for openly criticizing the General Staff for its plan to merge the independent service with the Russian Ground Forces. However he was restored to his post within a year. In 1997 he succeeded Nikolai Staskov as Deputy Commander of the Airborne Forces for Peacekeeping Forces.

On 30 October 2000 he was appointed as commander of the Russian military contingent in the Kosovo Force. His original post of Deputy Commander for Peacekeeping Forces went to Major General Aleksandr Popov after he went to Kosovo. Kazantsev was to be assigned as the Deputy Commander of the Airborne Forces for Combat Training.

About a month after returning from Kosovo, on 17 December 2001, Kazantsev died after falling from the eighth floor of his Moscow apartment building, at the age of 48.