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Katya Hill, the sister of slain US citizen Jimmy Hill, spoke to reporters on Saturday about her brother’s death in Ukraine.
Jimmy Hill reportedly died on Wednesday morning after a Russian bomb exploded in Chernihiv. Jimmy Hill was in Ukraine at the time to help his partner undergo important medical procedures when he was reportedly killed in a bread line. But Katya Hill told the press about new discoveries in the circumstances of her brother’s death.
“Although initial reports indicated that he was killed in a bread line, the State Department told us that his death was caused by a Russian bomb. Jimmy was in the civilian area of the city near the Chernihiv hospital. The State Department has not yet contacted the family to give us details,” Hill told the press.
AMERICAN KILLED BY RUSSIAN TROOPS IN UKRAINE “HELP, PEACEKEEPER”: SISTER SPEAKS
“My brother was in Chernigov to organize the treatment of his life partner Irina Teslenko,” Hill added. “She has multiple sclerosis and Jimmy was by her side for years as the disease attacked her body. He never lost hope of finding a treatment that would help stop the progression of multiple sclerosis.”
Jimmy Hill photo courtesy of the Hill family.
Katya Hill received news from the US government of the updated circumstances of Jimmy’s death minutes before going to the media.
“I received – a few minutes before this press conference began – more details about how my brother died, about the circumstances, about the woman whom, as I indicated, my brother became friends with and who lived near the hospital. Her name is Katrina,” Hill explained. “Katrina and Jimmy went looking for buses that could take people from the city to here along a safe corridor. outside.
“So my brother decided to turn back, go back to the hospital to Irene. And that’s when the bomb went off,” Katrina shared on our messaging group.”
According to the governor of the region, over the past few days, the frontline city of Chernihiv has been heavily bombed, killing at least 53 civilians in a day. This figure cannot be confirmed independently.
Hill elaborated on Russian tactics seen during the bombing, warning that the military would use the lull in the fighting to draw civilians into the open.
“The strategy that is used when killing civilians is that there will be intense bombing, which then stops, and there will be no bombing for an hour or several hours,” she explained. “Then people feel safe and they don’t have food, so shops and lines for bread will open. They will go out and line up to try to get bread or food or other supplies, and then the bombardment will resume, and this bombardment is targeting those lines.”
Hill told reporters that she is especially grateful to US Senators Amy Klobachar and Tina Smith, Democrats of Minnesota, and Bob Casey, of Pennsylvania, for their help in contacting the family with the US government for more information.
Jimmy Hill photo courtesy of the Hill family.
“The family would like to thank Senator Casey of Pennsylvania and Senator Smith and Klobuchar of Minnesota for reaching out to the State Department on behalf of the family,” she said.
This will be Katya Hill’s last public appearance for a while, she said, as she intends to spend the coming weeks grieving alone with her family.
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In the weeks before his death, Jimmy Hill described, in a series of heartbreaking Facebook posts, the appalling living conditions in the war-torn city. He posted a photo of his partner under the covers in a hospital bed.
“No one in Chernihiv is safe. Indiscriminate bombing,” he wrote on March 2. — Ukrainian forces hold the city, but are surrounded. Here is the siege. Nobody enters. Nobody comes out.”
Photograph of Jimmy Hill (center) provided by the Hill family.
As days passed, he documented the escalation of shelling and artillery attacks and a desire to flee the country, but worried that it was too dangerous and that his partner was too weak to make the journey.
“This is a living nightmare, but we are alive,” Hill wrote on March 11.
He is at least the second US citizen to be killed by Russian forces in Ukraine since the invasion began. Journalist and filmmaker Brent Renault was shot and killed by Russian troops while reporting on the refugee crisis.
Rebecca Rosenberg of Fox News contributed to this report.