Ukraine's Foreign Ministry responds to murder of Ukrainian mother and daughter in Belgium
Foreign Minister AndriI Sybiha has instructed the Ukrainian Embassy in Belgium to closely monitor the investigation into the deaths of two Ukrainian citizens – a mother, 46, and her 6-year-old daughter – in the Belgian town of Haasrode.
Source: press service of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, writes Interfax-Ukraine
Details: Consular officers are already in contact with the victims' relatives, as well as local police and prosecutors. The bodies of the two victims were discovered during a fire at a residential building.
Quote: "The circumstances of the deaths and the causes of the incident are being established. The Leuven prosecutor's office has opened criminal proceedings, and investigative actions are ongoing. Ukrainian diplomats will continue to provide necessary consular assistance and keep the public informed about the progress of the investigation."
As reported, two Ukrainians – a 46-year-old woman and her six-year-old daughter – have been found dead in a residential building in the Belgian town of Haasrode. Both victims had stab wounds and the crime scene had been deliberately set on fire.
Background
In April 2024, two Ukrainian servicemen aged 38 and 24, were killed in Murnau, Germany, while recovering from injuries in Bavaria.
A 58-year-old Russian man who murdered two Ukrainian soldiers in Germany was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Munich.
Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Watch: New footage of Ukraine's daring drone raid on Russian planes
Credit: Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Ukraine has released new footage of its daring raid last week that struck four Russian airfields. The clip, posted by Ukraine's Security Service (SBU), appears to show a first-person view drone taking off from a mobile wooden cabin and flying across fields before landing on a Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber. Footage from the drone seems to show a previously hit plane engulfed in flames. The attack on Belaya airbase in Siberia – which is more than 2,500 miles from Ukraine – was part of the wider Operation Spiderweb on June 1 in which drones were planted on trucks and launched at key strategic sites across Russia. In total, 41 planes were damaged, Kyiv claimed, including bombers used to attack Ukrainian cities, and an A-50 spy plane. The attack was reportedly 18 months in the planning and is estimated to have caused about £5 billion in damage. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Four killed in Russian attacks on Ukraine as Moscow continues to retaliate for Kyiv's drone strike
At least four people were killed in eastern Ukraine and more than two dozen were injured, including a baby and a 14-year-old, after Russia launched drone-and-missile and bomb attacks Saturday, Ukraine officials said. Russia launched 215 missiles and drones on Kharkiv, the war-torn nation's second-largest city, in the early hours of Saturday, killing three people and wounding more than 40 others, Ukrainian officials said. Later in the day, Russia dropped bombs on Kharkiv's city center, killing at least one more person and injuring five. "What the Russians want is the complete destruction of life," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday after the attacks. Trump Suggests Taking A Step Back From Ukraine Peace Talks "In more than 11 years of Russia's war against Ukraine, they have brought only one new thing to our land, the most widespread Russian 'legacy,' ruins and death," Zelenskyy added. "We must continue resisting this. I thank everyone around the world who is helping. The Russians are preparing to continue the war and are ignoring all peace proposals. They must be held accountable." Read On The Fox News App Zelenskyy said Ukraine would work to strengthen its air defense, adding, "We urgently need positive signals from the United States regarding air defense systems. We are still waiting for a response to our request to purchase systems that can help." He also thanked other European countries for sending supplies. "We must also achieve results in joint production of air defense systems and missiles. This is absolutely essential for our whole Europe," he added. "Only time separates us from that result, and what matters most is shortening that time." "This is another savage killing," he wrote on X along with graphic photos of some of the injured. "Aerial bombs were dropped on civilians in the city — there is even a children's railway nearby. This makes no military sense." He called the attack "pure terrorism. And this has been going on for more than three years of the full-scale war. This cannot be ignored. This cannot be turned a blind eye to. And this is not some kind of game. Every day, we lose our people only because Russia feels it can act with impunity. Russia must be firmly forced into peace." Russia Launches Largest Aerial Attack Of Ukraine War, Killing At Least 12 Last Sunday, Ukraine launched a surprise drone attack on Russian territory that destroyed 40 Russian planes, according to Kyiv. In his evening address, Zelenskyy said 117 drones had been used in the operation. He claimed the operation was headquartered out of an office next to the local FSB, the Russian intelligence agency. On Friday, Russia launched another drone attack on six territories in Ukraine that killed six people, including a baby, and injured 80, according to Ukraine officials. The attack came after President Donald Trump had a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in which the Russian leader said he planned to retaliate. Trump responded to the attacks Friday, telling reporters on Air Force One, "Well, they gave Putin a reason to go in and bomb the hell out of them last night. … When I saw it, I said, 'Here we go, now it's going to be a strike.'" On Thursday, Trump also compared the Russia-Ukraine war to children. "Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy. They hate each other, and they're fighting in a park, and you try and pull them apart, they don't want to be pulled," Trump said in the Oval Office. "Sometimes you're better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart." Ukraine and Russia have so far held two rounds of peace talks with few tangible article source: Four killed in Russian attacks on Ukraine as Moscow continues to retaliate for Kyiv's drone strike
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Families of Ukraine's missing fear peace will not bring them home
Tatyana Popovytch had contacted every agency she could think of. She had walked every step her son Vladislav could have taken after the Russians opened fire at his car, leaving him to flee with a bullet in his leg. She had looked in mass graves, reviewed pictures of the dead, watched exhumations. And after a month, she knew no more than when she had started. Then a stranger called. Serhii had just been released from a Russian prison in Kursk. At morning roll call, the prisoners could not see one another, but they could hear each person state their full name and home village. Serhii memorised as many names and places as he could – 10 in total, he said – and on 9 May 2022 he called Tatyana to say that he had heard her son's voice. Like Vladislav, Serhii was a civilian captured from Bucha at the start of the war, when hundreds of civilians were taken from this area. Vladislav was 29 at the time. Now 32, he is still in the prison in Kursk. Serhii couldn't explain to Tatyana why he had been released and Vladislav hadn't. Tatyana was just glad to hear that her son was alive. "I was so overjoyed I lost the stutter I'd had since he was taken," she said. Three years later, to the day, Tatyana was sitting in a café in Bucha, not far from where her son was abducted, looking over the scant evidence that he was still alive: two letters from him – short, boilerplate texts, written in Russian, telling her he was well fed and well looked after. Each letter had taken around three months to reach Tatyana, making it hard for her to feel very connected to her son at any point in time. "My son is very gentle and sensitive," she said, with the pained expression of a parent who cannot protect their child. She was looking at pictures of Vlad ballroom dancing – a hobby from a young age. "He is so vulnerable," she said. "I worry that he will lose his sanity there." According to Ukrainian authorities, nearly 16,000 Ukrainian civilians are still in captivity in Russian prisons after being abducted by the invading army – not counting the more than 20,000 Ukrainian children estimated to have been taken to Russia. There are growing fears now among their many thousands of loved ones, amid the apparent progress towards peace talks, that they could be forgotten or lost in the process. And those fears appear to be justified. Under the Geneva Convention, there is a recognised mechanism for exchanging prisoners of war, but no such mechanism exists for the return of captured civilians, leaving even top Ukrainian and international officials searching for an explanation as to how they might be brought home. "When I attend official meetings, at the ombudsman's office or elsewhere, no one talks about getting the civilians back in the event of a ceasefire," said Yulia Hripun, 23, whose father was kidnapped early on in the war from a village just west of Kyiv. In the weeks after learning of her father's captivity, Yulia used Facebook to contact another daughter of an imprisoned Ukrainian and the pair launched a new organisation to campaign for all the civilians' release. The group has met representatives from the UN, the European Parliament, the governments of several EU countries and the US embassy in Ukraine. "We spoke with them but it came down to the fact that they honestly don't understand what's going to happen," Yulia said, of meeting the Americans. "The only thing they said is that Trump is interested in the issue of deported children and that maybe civilians could somehow fit into that category. But they are actually different categories that can't be combined." Worryingly for Yulia and other relatives of the captured civilians, top Ukrainian officials are not pretending to have a stronger idea. "I do not see the real, effective approach to returning the civilian detainees to Ukraine," said Dmytro Lubinets, the country's human rights ombudsman. "We do not have a legal basis or the mechanisms for returning them," he said, frankly. Further complicating the problem is Russia levelling criminal charges against some of those captured during the invasion. "And when you see these charges, it is often 'actions against the special military operation'," Lubinets said. "Can you imagine opening an investigation against a Ukrainian civilian for simply resisting the invading Russian army, on Ukrainian territory?" In May, Russia released 120 civilian detainees as part of a larger swap of prisoners of war, and further exchanges are expected. But the numbers are still vanishingly small compared to the tens of thousands said to have been seized – adults and children. And great uncertainty remains over the path towards a negotiated peace. "You want to believe he is coming home, at the same time you can't believe it," said Petro Sereda, 61, a bus driver from Irpin, near Kyiv, whose son Artym was taken prisoner more than three years ago. "It is extremely difficult." Petro and his wife live in shipping container-style temporary accommodation in Irpin, because their home was destroyed in the invasion. Even three years on, every time the phone rings Petro thinks it might be Artym. "It is one thing to have a letter saying he is alive, but to hear his voice… That would be the joy that he is really alive." The families live like this, in desperate hope. The dream is that they get to see their loved ones again. It is not a straightforward dream, though – some fear that Russian captivity will have caused lasting damage. Tatyana, whose ballroom-dancing son Vladislav was abducted from Bucha, said she shuddered to hear the Russian language now "because it is the language my son is being tortured in." There is also the issue of what is missed. During Vladislav's detention, his father passed away unexpectedly at just 50, carrying a well of guilt that he was not able to protect his son. All Tatyana can do is prepare mentally for Vladislav's return. She expected to "feel every possible emotion," she said. "It is all I think about. All the time, every day." Daria Mitiuk contributed to this report. Photographs by Joel Gunter
