Two aid workers, a Canadian and a Spaniard, were killed in eastern Ukraine on Sunday in an attack that Kiev blamed on Russian troops.
Kiev accused Russian forces of killing two humanitarian workers, a Canadian and a Spanish woman, in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, September 10, calling their deaths a “painful and irreparable loss.” The day was also marked by various military operations and controversial elections in Ukrainian territories occupied by Russian forces. Here’s what you need to keep in mind.
Two Canadian and Spanish aid workers killed in Ukraine
Two aid workers, a Canadian woman and a Spanish woman, were killed on Sunday near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine in an attack that Kiev blamed on Russian troops. The two victims, Anthony Ihnat and Emma Igual, worked for the NGO Road to Relief. According to the NGO, the attack occurred on Saturday morning in Hasiv Yar, near Bakhmout. “After a direct hit, the vehicle rolled over and caught fire,” she said. Emma Igual, 32, was director and co-founder of the structure dedicated to the evacuation of civilians from the front lines.
The group of aid workers had left Sloviansk and headed to Bakhmut to assess the needs of civilians “caught in the crossfire” in the city of Ivanivske. Road to Relief said two of its volunteers, Ruben Mawick, a German citizen, and Johan Mathias Thyr, a Swedish citizen, were also “injured by shrapnel and burns.”
Moscow claims attacks, Kiev calls for “continue”
According to the Russian army, Russia claimed to have destroyed three military speedboats with Ukrainian soldiers on board in the Black Sea on Saturday night and were en route to annexed Crimea. The Russian military also announced that eight Ukrainian drones were shot down by air defenses over Crimea and another in the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine.
The Ukrainian army accuses the Russian armed forces of firing 32 explosive drones on its territory, mainly in the Kiev region, on the night from Saturday to Sunday. Of these, “25 were destroyed by the Ukrainian air defense forces,” the Ukrainian General Staff confirmed. According to the Kiev military administration, an apartment was damaged by falling debris, as were cars and trolleybus cables. One person was injured.
At the front, Ukraine mentioned an advance by its troops against the Russians in the south of the country. “We are making progress! The defense forces in the Tavria sector have advanced by more than a kilometer,” said the general in charge of the counteroffensive in this region.
Putin’s party is the leader in the occupied territories
According to Russia’s Central Election Commission, President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party came out on top in Sunday evening’s regional elections in the four regions of Ukraine annexed by Moscow. Despite strong condemnation from the West, Russia announced in September 2022 the annexation of four Ukrainian territories over which it only partially controls (Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk), following “referendums” that were not recognized by the international community.
With these elections, which span three days from Friday to Sunday, Moscow is trying to legitimize its annexations in Ukraine through votes in the occupied territories in the east and south. The future local and regional elected officials will theoretically have the opportunity to appoint the governors and mayors of the municipalities. Kiev and its allies have already denounced the “illegal” elections.
Turkey wants to revive the Black Sea grain agreement
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded that Russia should not be “marginalized” in talks to revive the deal to export Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea. He announced the organization of an upcoming meeting on the issue with Russian, Ukrainian and UN officials, without specifying a date or location. Any initiative that would isolate Moscow on this issue “will not be feasible,” he warned after the end of the G20 summit in New Delhi and a few days after his trip to Sochi, Russia, to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The agreement, negotiated in the summer of 2022 under the auspices of Ankara and the United Nations, aimed to ensure grain exports from Kiev via Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea. Russia withdrew from the agreement, which is crucial to global food supplies, in July, saying international market access for its own agricultural products and fertilizers had been hampered by Western sanctions.