2 NGO employees dead

France in shock: “Russian barbarism”

A damaged residential building in the Kherson region(Bild: Nina Liashonok/NurPhoto/NurPhoto via AFP)

France's Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné has condemned Russia's recent attacks on Ukraine, in which two French NGO workers were killed, with harsh words. "Russian barbarity has been directed against civilians in Ukraine", emphasized Séjourné. He expressed his sympathy to the relatives.

"Two French humanitarian aid workers have paid for their efforts for Ukrainians with their lives", French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné announced on X on Friday.

"Russia will have to answer for its actions"
"Russia will have to answer for its crime", emphasized the Foreign Minister. Earlier, Ukrainian authorities had reported the death 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 governor of the region, Oleksandr Prokudin, on Telegram on Thursday. "The Russian army killed two French citizens. Three other foreigners were slightly injured." One Ukrainian was also injured in the attack, the governor added.

A damaged residential building in the Kherson region(Bild: Nina Liashonok/NurPhoto/NurPhoto via AFP)

Russian drone attack
According to the Ukrainian police, the attack was a Russian drone strike. The Frenchmen killed were two men and the injured were three men and one woman. "All of the victims had come to the Kherson region as volunteers," explained the police. The Ukrainian authorities often use the term "volunteers" to refer to employees of aid organizations.

Krywyj Rih partly without electricity after drone attacks 
During the night, Ukraine was again hit by Russian drone attacks. This caused a major power outage in the industrial city of Krywyj Rih. Tens of thousands of households and numerous industrial companies in the city in the Dniproperovsk region in the south-east of the country were cut off from the power supply due to damage to a plant, according to the Ukrainian energy company Ukrenerho.

The regional governor Serhij Lysak announced that two mining shafts were also affected by the power outage; 100 workers were underground at the time. Some of them were brought to the surface. According to the authorities, work was underway to restore the power supply. Kryvyi Rih is the birthplace of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The massive drone attack mainly affected the southern and central parts of the country, Ukrenerho added. The Ukrainian air defense reported in the morning that a total of eleven of 24 Russian drones had been shot down. The Russian attacks were once again targeted at important infrastructure. Ukraine has been defending itself against the Russian war of aggression for almost two years.