By Yuri Kovalenko
KIEV (Reuters) – Tearful people in Kiev on Sunday commemorated a British volunteer killed while attempting a rescue mission from the eastern Ukrainian city of Soledar.
British volunteer Andrew Bagshaw, for whom the service was being held, and fellow volunteer Chris Parry, were killed during an attempted humanitarian evacuation in eastern Ukraine, Parry’s family said.
Several dozen mourners, including other volunteers who knew Bagshaw and others who came to express their condolences, gathered at a small church on the territory of Kiev’s ancient St. Sophia Cathedral for a priest-led service orthodox.
“I remember one of the first times we went (on an evacuation run) together. He was a very quiet person, he just wanted to help people,” volunteer Ignat Ivlev-Yorke, who organized the memorial service, told Reuters. Bagshaw.
“He felt that this was his mission. That he had a duty to do it.”
Sky News reported that Bagshaw’s family said volunteers were killed as they tried to rescue an elderly woman from the town of Soledar. Ukrainian police said the two men disappeared on Jan. 7.
Ukraine first acknowledged Wednesday that it had withdrawn from Soledar, nearly two weeks after Russian troops said they had captured the small salt-mining town.
(Writing by Max Hunder; Editing by Alison Williams)
