Russian troops killed a 26-year-old Ukrainian woman who was delivering food to a dog shelter in Bucha, 30 kilometers outside Kyiv, Global News reports.
As the invaders made their way to the city, Anastasiia Yalanskaya insisted she would stay, even while her friends and family fled around her. On Friday, she was shot and killed alongside two other volunteers.
Yalanskaya’s friends and family say her car was deliberately targeted at close-range by Russian troops, according to the report.
Her friends told the outlet that Russian troops are “increasingly killing civilians at random as a way to scare the population into submission.”
Yalanskaya’s best friend, Anastasiia Hryshchenko, who evacuated to Vinnytsia, 250 kilometers southwest of Kyiv, raised the alarm about her friend after she hadn’t heard from her in several hours.
When Yalanskaya didn’t respond for several hours, they know something was wrong.
“The world should know that she’s a hero. “She was helping people. She believed in people, Valeriia Gorska, a former colleague and friend said. “I knew her three years ago, and I knew her now, and I saw a change in her recently. She was so strong. And she was never prouder to be Ukrainian.”
Yalanskaya’s husband said “she was helping everyone around. I asked her to think of evacuation but she did not listen.”
Despite denials from Russian President Vladimir Putin, the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine is mounting – though the total number remains unclear.
