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French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné: "Russian barbarism was directed against civilians in Ukraine"
Photo: Bernd Elmenthaler / IMAGO
Two French employees of a non-governmental organization were killed in a Russian attack in Ukraine. "Two French humanitarian aid workers paid with their lives for their work on behalf of Ukrainians," said French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné on the online service X, formerly Twitter. Three other people were injured in the attack. "Russian barbarism has been directed against civilians in Ukraine," he added.
Séjourné expressed his condolences to the relatives. “Russia will have to answer for its crimes,” emphasized the Foreign Minister. Ukrainian authorities had previously reported the deaths of two Frenchmen in an attack on the city of Beryslav in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson.
"Foreign volunteers were killed and injured in an enemy attack on Beryslav," said the region's governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, on the Telegram online service on Thursday. »The Russian army killed two French citizens. Three other foreigners were slightly injured.”
A Ukrainian was also injured in the attack, the governor added. According to Ukrainian police, it was a Russian drone attack. The French people killed were two men and the injured were three men and one woman. "All victims came to the Kherson region as volunteers," the police explained. The Ukrainian authorities often use the term volunteers to describe the employees of aid organizations.
aeh/AFP