Two French people were killed on Thursday February 1 in southern Ukraine during a Russian bombing. The victims were aid workers, the French foreign ministry said on Friday, adding that three others were injured. The strike occurred in Beryslav, in the Kherson oblast, the governor of the oblast, Oleksandr Prokudin, declared the day before.
The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) announced that it had opened an investigation for “war crimes” and “intentional attack on the life of a person protected by international humanitarian law”. Entrusted to the gendarmes of the Central Office for the Fight against Crimes Against Humanity (OCLCH), this is the tenth procedure opened by the PNAT since the start of the conflict in February 2022.
French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné denounced “Russian barbarity” which has “targeted civilians in Ukraine.” “Russia will have to answer for its crimes,” he said. In the process, the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, castigated “a cowardly and unworthy act”. “My solidarity goes to all the volunteers who are committed to helping the populations,” he also declared.
Volodymyr Zelensky denounces “Russian terror”
On social networks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the memory of the two “courageous” French humanitarians who “helped people”, castigating “Russian terror” which does not take into account the “nationality of the victims”.
The French humanitarian workers were working for the NGO Entraide protestante suisse (EPER), which confirmed on Friday that it had lost two employees during a “fatal attack” in southern Ukraine, without specifying their identity.
The two French humanitarian workers are added to the list of several French civilians killed in Ukraine since the start of the war two years ago. Arman Soldin, a journalist with Agence France-Presse (AFP), was killed in May 2023 during a Russian rocket attack in the east of the country, near Bakhmout. Before him, Pierre Zakrzewski, a Franco-Irish cameraman for Fox News, was killed in mid-March 2022 northwest of Kiev after the attack on his vehicle, and Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, a journalist for BFM-TV, had was killed in late May 2022 while following a humanitarian mission in the east of the country.
