KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Friends and volunteers gathered Sunday at St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv to say goodbye to Andrew Bagshaw.New Zealand scientist killed in Ukraine With another volunteer as they try to evacuate people from a frontline town.
Bagshaw, 48, a British New Zealander, and British volunteer Christopher BarryThe 28-year-old went missing this month while on his way to the town of Soledar in the eastern Donetsk region, where heavy fighting is taking place.
The volunteers talked about their memories of Bagshaw and read greetings from his family.
Nikolita Stoyanova, a friend in Ukraine, shared memories of his bravery.
“Even if someone doesn’t want to go to Solidar, they can do it. Because if he understands that someone needs help, he should provide that help to those people,” Stoyanova said, speaking in English.
Bagshaw’s father, Phil, told reporters in New Zealand that his son wanted to do something to help.
“He was a very intelligent man, a very independent thinker,” he said. “And he thought for a long time about the situation in Ukraine, and thought it was immoral. He felt that the only thing he could do of a constructive nature was to go there and help people.”
Ukrainian police said on January 9 that they had lost contact with Bagshaw and Barry after the two drove to Solidar. Their bodies were later recovered. A Ukrainian official reported on Wednesday that the defending forces made an orderly retreat From a salt mining town.
In a January 24 statement, Barry’s family said he was “drawn to Ukraine in March during its darkest hour.” They said he “helped those who needed it most, saving over 400 people as well as many abandoned animals.”
Friends said the men’s bodies would be handed over to relatives in the UK
The regional administration in southern Ukraine said that, on Sunday, Russian forces bombed the city of Kherson, killing three people and wounding six others. It added that the bombing damaged a hospital, a school, a bus station, a post office, a bank and residential buildings.
Among the injured in the hospital at the time were two women: a nurse and a cafeteria worker. Russian troops retreated He crossed the Dnieper from Kherson in November, but still held much of the province of the same name.
On Sunday, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine and its Western allies War crimes related to the bombing of two hospitals in Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine.
Russian officials said 14 people were killed on Saturday when a hospital in the Novoydar settlement in eastern Luhansk province was bombed. They said the shells also landed on the grounds of a hospital in Nova Kakhovka, a Russian-occupied city in Kherson province where a strategically vital bridge across the lower reaches of the Dnieper River is located.
“The deliberate bombing of active civilian medical facilities and the targeted killing of civilians are serious war crimes of the Kyiv regime and its Western masters,” the State Department said. “The lack of reaction from the United States and other NATO countries to this, yet another egregious attack on international humanitarian law by Kyiv, once again confirms their direct involvement in the conflict and their complicity in the crimes being committed.”
Russian forces bombed hundreds of hospitals and other medical facilities in Ukraine since the war began, reducing more than 100 of them to rubble, according to Ukraine’s health ministry.
Russian state television broadcast footage of what it said was the damaged hospital in Novoydar. She added that the missiles hit the children’s section of the two-storey building.
There are no military factories here. There are no military vehicles or tanks. Who did you shoot? ” said Olga Ryasnaya in an interview on Russian television, which introduced her as a pediatric nurse.
Luhansk province, where Novoydar is located, is almost completely under the control of Russian troops Or Russian-backed separatists. Russian and separatist officials claimed that the hospital was deliberately targeted. Journalists’ movements are restricted in areas of Ukraine under Russian control.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Ukrainian forces were likely increasing strikes on Russian positions deep in Luhansk Province, near the Russian border, in an effort to “disrupt Russian logistics and ground lines of communication.” Part of the preparations for a future counterattack.
In other developments:
– A Russian missile hit an apartment building in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, late Sunday, killing at least one person and wounding three others, officials said.
The UK Ministry of Defense said on Sunday that Ukrainian tank crews have arrived in the UK to start training on the Challenger 2 battle tank. The UK government said it would send 14 tanks to Ukrainewhich also promised advanced battle tanks from the United States, Germany and other European allies.
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