A Ukrainian woman was allegedly shot dead by a Russian tank in a roadside ambush after she went to get medicine for her sick mother.
Valeria Maksetskaya, 31, along with her mother Irina and their driver, were shot dead by a passing Russian tank in a village near Kiev.
Friends hailed the late Maksetskaya as a “brave” woman, saying she stayed in Ukraine to help locals under siege after the Russian invasion more than two weeks ago.
She made the fateful decision to flee the country when her mother ran out of medication and the couple were on their way to Ukraine’s western borders when they were ambushed by a Russian tank column.
Maksetskaya stopped to let Muscovites through when one of them allegedly opened fire on her car, killing the 31-year-old woman, her mother, and their driver.
Valeria Maksetskaya, 31, was allegedly shot and killed by a Russian tank in a roadside ambush while on her way to find a cure for her ailing mother.
Maksetskaya was shot dead along with her mother Irina and their driver by a passing Russian tank in a village near Kiev. Friends hailed the late Maksetskaya as a “brave” woman, saying she stayed in Ukraine to help locals under siege after the Russian invasion more than two weeks ago.
USAID administrator Samantha Power confirmed that all three died in the attack.
She said, “I am deeply saddened to share the death of Valeria “Lera” Maksetskaya, a proud Ukrainian, beloved USAID implementation partner, and a brilliant, compassionate leader in building social cohesion and fighting disinformation. She was killed by the Russian military shortly before her 32nd birthday.
“She survived the shelling of Donetsk, moved to Kyiv and began working with USAID, where she was loved as a “brave woman with a good heart.”
“Lera, a medical doctor, could have left Kyiv when the invasion began, but she stayed to help others,” she added.
“Only when her mother Irina ran out of medicine, she evacuated. As Lera, Irina and their driver Yaroslav were waiting in the car for the Russian convoy to pass, they were fired on by a tank, killing all three.
“Lera’s death is devastating for @USAID, @Chemonics and everyone who knew her. We celebrate her fierce devotion to Ukraine and her joyful spirit.
“As Lera wrote, when Kyiv was attacked, she was outraged by the terrible violence, “but so proud that she is Ukrainian and lives where beliefs matter.”
She made the fateful decision to flee the country when her mother ran out of medication and the couple were on their way to Ukraine’s western borders when they were ambushed by a Russian tank column.
Dnipro, Lutsk and Ivan-Frankvisk came under fire from Russia early Friday morning, while largely evading attacks, while attempts to capture the cities of Kharkiv, Sumy and Mariupol resumed. Ukrainian commanders say the capital Kyiv will soon be surrounded as Putin’s men advance to the outskirts
Jamie Butcher, CEO of Chemonics, wrote: “This is my employee Valeria (Lera) Maksetskaya. She was killed in a village west of Kyiv when she was trying to get medicine for her sick mother.”
Maksetskaya, who worked at Chemonics, was born and raised in Donetsk. She worked as part of the humanitarian response following Russia’s invasion of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
Her death came less than a day after Russian troops blew up a nursing home near Kharkov.
Oleg Sinegubov, a Kharkiv official who has been under siege by Russian troops for days, accused Putin’s men of committing a “war crime” by launching airstrikes on a facility in the city of Oskil, which had 330 residents at the time of the explosion. hit.
Sinegubov said 63 nursing home residents have since been evacuated, but could not provide an update on the remaining 267.
Ten of those who live in the house need wheelchairs, he said, and another 50 have limited mobility.
The mayor of the city, Igor Terekhov, said that another 48 schools were destroyed by Russian missiles.
Just 48 hours before the nursing home was destroyed, Russian jets bombed a maternity hospital in the southern city of Mariupol where women were giving birth.
The Kremlin has sought to portray those injured in the attack as “participants in the crisis” in a dastardly propaganda effort to refute accusations that its troops target women and children.
Ukraine says Russian attacks have now killed more civilians than soldiers, without giving exact numbers for either, as Kremlin generals move from pinpoint “shock and awe” strikes to “medieval” sieges. wars.
Dnipro, hundreds of miles south of Kharkiv, was hit by three strikes early Friday that damaged a kindergarten, apartment building and shoe factory and killed at least one person.
Footage filmed somewhere in Ukraine shows another of Vladimir Putin’s helicopter plummeting through the sky after it was apparently hit by a surface-to-air missile.
Firefighters spray water on a destroyed shoe factory following an airstrike in Dnipro after the city was hit by three Russian air strikes.
Ambulance crews assess damage on a residential street in Dnipro, central Ukraine, after it came under fire on Friday – it largely escaped gunfire during the war.
Firefighters work to put out a blaze in the city of Dnipro, central Ukraine, after three airstrikes Friday morning that destroyed a shoe factory and killed at least one civilian.