Russia mourns doctor killed in Syria-bound plane crash

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 yesterday'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.
"She didn't live her life in vain because she did a lot of good," said 48-year-old Anna, weeping as she laid flowers on the organisation's doorstep in central Moscow.
Glinka's death sparked a national outpouring of grief that spanned the political spectrum, with the defence ministry, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and the opposition-friendly mayor of the Urals city of Yekaterinburg pledging to rename a medical facility in her honour.

But unlike the Red Army Choir, Glinka was not known internationally, humbly building her reputation as a selfless worker by assisting Russia's underprivileged.

After graduating from medical school in Moscow in 1986, Glinka and her husband Gleb emigrated to the United States where she studied palliative care.
She later returned to Russia and also lived for some time in neighbouring Ukraine, where she founded a hospice affiliated with a Kiev oncology clinic.
In Moscow she is mostly remembered for feeding, clothing and providing medical care to the homeless people who sleep in the Russian capital's sprawling train stations.
"Liza Glinka helped the people that everyone turned away," human rights activist and opposition journalist Zoya Svetova, who knew Glinka, told AFP.