The mother of tragic model Ruslana Korshunova arrived from Kazakhstan yesterday and encountered what may have been the greatest source of her daughter’s angst – the two men who claim she was in love with them.
Valentina Korshunova came to identify the body of her daughter, who authorities said jumped to her death from her downtown apartment building on Water Street Saturday afternoon.
She was greeted with hugs and tears by relatives and the two loves of the model’s short life – her ex-boyfriend, Artem Perchenok, and latest flame, Mark Kaminsky.
The two rivals were the last to hear from the 20-year-old stunner before she died.
Both claimed that they were going to celebrate her 21st birthday, which would have been tomorrow, with her.
And each insists that he was the one she wanted to be with.
“This is like a dream. We keep thinking we’ll wake up,” said Perchenok, who greeted Ruslana’s mom with a hug.
Kaminsky rode with the mother to the Medical Examiner’s Office, with Perchenok in a trailing vehicle.
“I was her first love,” Perchenok said, showing a Post reporter a fresh tattoo of Ruslana’s name in Russian that he had gotten on the inside of his wrist Sunday night.
Kaminsky was the last person to speak with Ruslana.
The details of that conversation – less than eight hours after Perchenok left her at the house early Saturday after a long night together – remain unclear.
Perchenok said that when they got to the building at around 4:45 a.m., there was a short pause, and then she kissed him and said, “It’s nice to see you again.”
He said she called him less than a minute after going upstairs to say she still had his sweatshirt.
“I will get it the next time I see you,” he told her.
Perchenok and Ruslana split up last October – a breakup he blames on the stress of her modeling career.
She started dating Kaminsky a few months ago, but Perchenok claims it was not smooth sailing for the new couple.
Perchenok said she was going to spend her 21st birthday with him in the city and then possibly go to Atlantic City.
But Kaminsky said she was planning to go camping with him in Pennsylvania.
“She always was with me,” Kaminsky said Sunday outside Ruslana’s building. “We never spoke about Artem.”
But Perchenok called his relationship with the runway star “a fairy tale” and was convinced they would get back together.
One of Ruslana’s pals said she was stressed about her love life.
“She was always searching for love,” he said via e-mail from Russia. “I used to say to her never search for love. The love will find you.”
Another friend told The Post by e-mail that Ruslana had yet another boyfriend in Kazakhstan.
Additional reporting by Annie Wilner and Jennifer Fermino