Senior Lieutenant Alexander Alexandrovich Prokhorenko (22 June 1990 - 17 March 2016) was a Russian Special Forces lieutenant who was killed during the Palmyra offensive while fighting against the Islamic State terrorist group.
Prokhorenko graduated with honours from the Academy of Military Air Defence and went on to become an advanced aviation gunner. Since January 2016, he participated in the Russian offensive in Syria against The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Prokhorenko acted as a forward observer, scouting out enemy positions and providing airstrike coordinates.
On 17 March 2016, Prokhorenko was participating in the Palmyra offensive, the liberation of Palmyra from Islamic State, when his position was overrun by Islamic State fighters. Realizing that there was no way out, he called in an airstrike on his own position rather than risk capture and execution by ISIS. The airstrike killed Prokhorenko and several of the enemy fighters. His body was recovered by Kurdish forces and repatriated, and he was posthumously awarded the Hero of the Russian Federation by President Vladimir Putin.