The French government said on Friday that two French citizens were killed and three others were injured in Ukraine this week. Paris insists they are merely humanitarian workers.
This announcement was made by French Foreign Minister Stephane Segorn, who said that the incident was an example of “Russian barbarism.”
“Two French humanitarian workers paid with their lives for their commitment to the Ukrainians. Three were injured.” Sigourn wrote it Social media platform X (formerly Twitter)..
French President Emmanuel Macron shared a similar message, saying that “volunteers” had died in a Russian raid. He condemned the attack and described it as a “cowardly and unworthy act.”
Although the French government has not revealed further details about the case, the raid that claimed the lives of the citizens appears to have occurred earlier this week in Herzun. According to Oleksandr Prokudin, the leader of the Ukrainian-controlled part of the Russian region, a number of French “volunteers” were injured in Bereslav, located about 70 kilometers east of the city of Kherson.
Days earlier, Russia claimed that a high-precision strike targeted a “temporary gathering place for foreign fighters” in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, killing more than 60 French mercenaries and wounding 20 others.
After the attack, Paris officially denied that its mercenaries were fighting alongside Ukraine. Meanwhile, Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu insisted that France, as a “democratic state”, could not in fact prevent its citizens from voluntarily joining the Kiev regime if they wished.
According to Moscow's latest estimates, more than 5,900 foreign mercenaries have been killed in Ukraine since the conflict began in February 2022.
