US citizen killed in Ukraine

[iemanja]

A U.S. citizen was killed in Ukraine on Thursday, the State Department confirmed, after Ukrainian police first reported that an American and several others died when Russian troops shelled the city of Chernihiv, roughly 90 miles north of Kyiv.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged the death but did not release further details, and the total number of people killed in the attack was still unclear late Thursday, local authorities said. The artillery fire struck a residential area in the city center, according to the head of the Chernihiv regional police. Meanwhile in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Russian artillery strikes hit a school and cultural center, killing at least 23 people and injuring 26, local officials said.

The two high-profile attacks on civilian areas unfolded one day after a Russian airstrike demolished a theater in the port city of Mariupol while hundreds sheltered inside. Officials on Thursday said some had survived, but they still didn’t know how many were killed or injured. Mariupol has for weeks been the site of a relentless assault and conditions there have deteriorated into a humanitarian catastrophe.

The theater strike marked “another tragedy, in our already mangled Mariupol, of which there is already practically nothing left,” the city’s mayor said in a video message.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/17/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-live-updates/

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. He was from Minnesota.

https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-native-is-first-u-s-citizen-killed-in-ukraine/600156997/

Jimmy Hill's last act was gathering food for hospital patients in Ukraine.

The Mahtomedi native, 67, was killed Thursday in the northern Ukraine city of Chernihiv when Russian forces attacked people standing in a bread line. He is the first U.S. citizen to die in the war that began when Russia invaded Ukraine Feb. 24.

Hill met his end during a typically selfless act, said his sister, Cheryl Hill Gordon of Albuquerque.

Hill's longtime partner, a Ukrainian native, is hospitalized with multiple sclerosis and is too sick to leave her bed. As the Russian attacks intensified, the hospital ran short on food. Meanwhile, all of its remaining patients were too sick to leave.

[iemanja]

3. Wow

The Washington Post had no info on his identity. The Strib's description makes it all the more horrible.

[Chainfire]

2. Perhaps Zelensky should consider sending military targets in the city of Smolensk

some return love. Let the Russian people know that they, really are, at war.

[struggle4progress]

4. Jimmy Hill gunned down in bread line

BY EMMA MAYER ON 3/17/22 AT 1:53 PM EDT

... Cheryl Hill Gordon, Hill's sister, posted about her brother's death on Facebook. "He was waiting in a bread line with several other people when they were gunned down by Russian military snipers," Gordon wrote. "His body was found in the street by the local police" ...

A statement from Hill's other sister, Katya Hill, was posted to Gordon's Facebook page on March 12 ...

"After 14 days of bombing, the city is without electricity and gas, internet outages preventing communication, and food and water shortages. Patients in critical and severe conditions in the hospital have been without heat in very cold weather. People standing in lines for food have been killed by missiles" ...

https://www.newsweek.com/american-jimmy-hill-dead-ukraine-1689155

[iemanja]

5. Just awful.