A Ukrainian military doctor was killed and another wounded by gunfire by pro-Russian separatist fighters in the Donetsk region in the east of the country, which has been the scene of a war since 2014, the army announced on Monday (July 5th).
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According to a post on the Facebook page of the press service of the Ukrainian army's military operation in this region, the separatists fired on the positions of the Kiev forces on Sunday using firearms, machine guns and grenade launchers.
A 59-year-old military medic succumbed to his injuries after being hit by shrapnel, his military unit said.
Another wounded soldier has been hospitalized, but his life is not in danger, according to the press service of the military operation.
Ukraine has been in conflict since 2014 with separatists in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, a war that erupted shortly after Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula and has left more than 13,000 dead.
After a widely respected truce in the second half of 2020, tensions have risen a notch this year with in particular the deployment for several weeks by Russia of nearly 100,000 troops at the Ukrainian borders.
If Moscow announced that it had withdrawn these soldiers, this withdrawal remained limited, according to Kiev and the West.
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Russia has always asserted that its support for separatist regions was purely political, while Kiev and its Western allies denounced the sending of troops and weapons to Moscow.
