Vasyl Slipak went by the nom de guerre "Meph," after Mephistopheles, a character in the Goethe opera Faust. Russian media has since aired an interview with a separatist sniper nicknamed “Sailor” who claimed to have killed Slipak. Here, Slipak adopted Ukraine’s traditional, Mohawk-style haircut as well as the nom de guerre “Meph,” a nod to Mephistopheles’s aria from Faust, the opera based on Goethe’s great play. As a deadly surge in violence left Ukraine’s fragile ceasefire in tatters, the 41-year-old opera singer was killed by a sniper and became yet another victim of this grinding war of attrition on Europe’s far-eastern fringes. The dire conditions of the front line stood in marked contrast to Slipak’s former life performing in French opera productions.

Source: thestar July 03, 2016 01:22 UTC