2 Jews Killed in Breakaway Ukraine Region
Image by getty images
Two members from the same Jewish family were killed in shelling in the embattled eastern Ukrainian city of Lugansk.
The victims of the July 18 explosion were identified on the website of the Jewish community of Lugansk as Svetlana and Anna Sitnikov.
“They stood at a crosswalk with other civilians and just walked into a store,” the announcement read. One of the victims had a four-year-old son, Vadim Sitnikov, the website said.
The news site ch10.co.il reported Sunday that Rabbi Shlomo Gopin, Chabad’s emissary to Lugansk, was trying to bring the deceased to burial but that city officials had not yet authorized the event.
Gopin was not immediately available for comment.
Lugansk is among a number of cities in eastern Ukraine where the government is fighting pro-Russian separatists who took up arms after the ousting late February of former president Viktor Yanukovych in a revolution that erupted in November over his alleged corruption and close ties with the Kremlin in Russia.
Since fighting erupted, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Community of Dnepropetrovsk have helped more than 650 flee battle zones in eastern Ukraine, settling them in community institutions or providing alternative housing solutions in addition to food, medicine and counseling to help children cope with trauma.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
