Kyiv, Ukraine — Friends and volunteers gathered at Kiev’s St. Sophia Cathedral on Sunday to say goodbye to Andrew Bagshaw, a New Zealand scientist who was killed in Ukraine with another volunteer when they tried to evacuate people from a frontline town to evacuate.
Bagshaw, 48, a New Zealand-British citizen, and British volunteer Christopher Parry, 28, went missing this month as they drove to the town of Soledar in the eastern Donetsk region where fierce fighting was raging.
Volunteers shared their memories of Bagshaw and read tributes from his family.
Nikolletta Stoyanova, a friend in Ukraine, shared memories of his bravery.
“Even if nobody wanted to go to Soledar, they can do it. Because when he understood that someone needs help, he must provide that help to those people,” Stoyanova said in English.
Bagshaw’s father, Phil, told reporters in New Zealand that his son wanted to do something to help.
“He was a very intelligent man and a very independent thinker,” he said. “And he thought about the situation in Ukraine for a long time and he thought it was immoral. He felt the only thing he could do constructively was go there and help people.”
Ukrainian police said on January 9 they lost contact with Bagshaw and Parry after they drove to Soledar. Their bodies were later recovered. A Ukrainian official reported on Wednesday that the defense forces had staged an organized retreat from the salt mining town.
In a Jan. 24 statement, Parry’s family said he was “drawn to Ukraine in the darkest hour of March.” They said he “helped those most in need, saving over 400 lives and many abandoned animals.”
Friends said the men’s bodies would be given to relatives in the UK
In southern Ukraine, Russian forces heavily shelled the city of Kherson on Sunday, killing three people and wounding six others, the regional administration said. The shelling was said to have damaged a hospital, school, bus station, post office, bank and residential buildings.
Among the reported injuries were two women in the hospital at the time: a nurse and a cafeteria worker. Russian forces withdrew from Kherson across the Dnieper in November, but still hold much of the province of the same name.
On Sunday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine and its western allies of war crimes in connection with the shelling of two hospitals in Russian-held parts of Ukraine.
According to Russian officials, 14 people died on Saturday when a hospital was hit in the settlement of Novoaidar in eastern Lugansk province. They said shells also fell on the territory of a hospital in Nova Kakhovka, a Russian-held town in Kherson province where a strategically important bridge across the lower reaches of the Dnieper River is located.
“The deliberate shelling of active civilian medical facilities and the targeted killing of civilians are serious war crimes by the Kiev regime and its western masters,” the State Department said. “The failure of the United States and other NATO countries to respond to this renewed monstrous violation of international humanitarian law by Kyiv once again confirms their direct involvement in the conflict and their complicity in the crimes committed.”
According to Ukraine’s Health Ministry, Russian forces have shelled hundreds of hospitals and other medical facilities in Ukraine since the war began, reducing more than 100 to rubble.
Russian state television broadcast footage of the damaged hospital in Novoaidar. Rockets were said to have struck the pediatrics department of the two-story building.
“There are no military factories here. There are no military vehicles, no tanks. Who did you shoot at?” Olga Ryasnaya said in an interview on Russian television, which identified her as a pediatric nurse.
The Luhansk province, where Novoaidar is located, is almost entirely under the control of Russian forces or Russian-backed separatists. Russian and Separatist officials claimed the hospital was deliberately attacked. The movements of journalists are restricted in areas of Ukraine under Russian control.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Ukrainian forces are likely to step up attacks on Russian positions deep in Luhansk province, closer to Russia’s border, to “disrupt Russian logistics and ground communications.” . It was said the strikes could be part of preparations for a future counter-offensive.