In the days before her death, a suicidal supermodel felt confused about the direction of her life and struggled with a mysterious stomach ailment, friends said yesterday.
Candid Photos Of Ruslana Korshunova
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In addition, Kazakh catwalker Ruslana Korshunova had lost a lot of weight in the last month and had trouble balancing her personal life and her demanding work schedule, her bewildered ex-boyfriend said yesterday.
“I think she just gave up,” said Artem Perchenok, 24, who was with Korshunova on the last night of her short life.
The 5-foot-8 head-turner, who liked camping and fishing, kept her problems “bottled up,” he said. “When a job would go bad, she’d take it out on herself.”
But her latest beau, Mark Kaminsky, 32, of Staten Island – who said he talked with Ruslana hours before her suicide plunge – insisted the beauty was “liking what she did.”
“She was a love for me,” he said, noting the first time he saw her he gushed: “I’m in shock over your beauty.”
To outsiders, it appeared the one-time Russian Vogue cover girl was living a charmed life.
She had a full schedule of high-profile modeling gigs in New York and had recently returned from Paris.
“She loved life,” one Russian friend told The Post, while another, Maxim Ilin, said she “was the most cheerful and positive person I knew.”
Perchenok speculated, “She was doing great [in her career]. Maybe she was overworked.
“It [her career] was taking off. She was busy, busy. When you’re 20 years old and you travel the world, how can you complain? But . . . your family’s back home and people are telling you what to do and how much to eat and how to walk.”
The size-4 stunner appeared to have dropped some serious weight from her already thin frame and was complaining about a stomachache in the four or five days before her death.
And she told her manager “she didn’t know what to do with her life,” said her ex, who lives in Little Neck, Queens. Authorities officially declared Korshunova’s death a suicide yesterday as friends and relatives struggled to comprehend the tragedy.
Half a world away in Kazakhstan, her grief-stricken mother said she would never understand what went wrong.
“She’s had her ups and downs but never anything that would lead to suicide. This is completely unexpected,” she told The Post from her home in Almaty.
“She was working, and everything seemed to be going fine. She was going to Milan [to work].”
The mother and her son, Korshunova’s brother, Ruslan, will make the sad trek to New York to claim the body of the “happy girl” who left home to make it big.
Korshunova killed herself Saturday – four days before she was set to celebrate her birthday.
“She was going to turn 21 on Wednesday,” said Nina Perchenok, Artem’s mother.
“When she had a conversation with my son, she said, ‘I’m 21, so I feel sad.’ She asked, ‘Where am I going to celebrate?’ ”
The young beauty – known in the fashion world for her flowing, Rapunzel-like tresses – was featured in ads for Marc Jacobs, DKNY and Vera Wang, and also made the cover of French Elle.
“She was lonely, it looked like,” Perchenok said.
But her death – after spending the night watching the movie “Ghost” with her ex – was completely unexpected.
“I never heard of her being depressed. Maybe a year ago, when she wanted to change agencies,” the mother said.
“But she would explain her problems. I can’t understand why she wouldn’t explain her problems [now].”
Korshunova left no note before she jumped.
One investigator told The Post they found several bottles of medication; the labels were in Russian.
The model plummeted from her ninth-floor apartment on Water Street in downtown Manhattan on Saturday afternoon.
A crowd of about a dozen weeping friends gathered there yesterday. They surrounded the spot where her body landed and covered it with orchids and candles.
Additional reporting by Rebecca Rosenberg, Anne Wilner and Jamie Schram