Oksana Shvets death: Ukrainian actor killed in Russian rocket attack, aged 67

Star’s theatre colleagues have spoken of their ‘unrepairable grief’

Ukrainian actor Oksana Shvets has died, aged 67, after the residential building she was in in Kyiv was struck by Russian rockets.

Shvets’s death was announced by the Young Theatre, where she was part of the troupe. Her colleagues there expressed “unrepairable grief” over her death.

“Bright memory to the talented actress!” the statement said.

“There is no forgiveness for the enemy that has come to our land!”

The actor, born in 1955, had a decades-long career in theatre and film. She was one of the country’s most accomplished performing artists.

In addition to her time with the Young Theatre, Shvets had worked at the Ternopil Music and Drama Theatre and the Kyiv Theatre of Satire.

Shvets’s death follows that of another Ukrainian actor, Pasha Lee, who died aged 33 after enlisting in the Ukraine army’s Territorial Defence Forces.

Officials in the US are “documenting and evaluating” the potential war crimes committed in Ukraine, secretary of state Antony Blinken has said, while echoing Joe Biden’s characterisation of Russian atrocities as being such crimes.

It comes after Biden accused Vladimir Putin of being a war criminal, in what many saw as a turning point in US-Russian relations.

Meanwhile, survivors are reported to have emerged after Russian forces bombarded a theatre sheltering thousands of civilians in Mariupol, leaving many buried under burning rubble.

Efforts to find people remained slow on Thursday (13 March), with the number of casualties still unknown. However, Sergiy Taruta, the former Donetsk region head, said during an interview on Ukrainian television that he believed around 1,300 people were in the building when it was bombed and more than 100 have so far been rescued.

Read updates on the Russia-Ukraine conflict here.

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