Oksana Shvets, one of Ukraine’s most famous stage actresses has been killed in a Russian rocket attack while she slept in an apartment in southeast Kyiv.
Her death was confirmed by the Young Theatre, a Ukrainian theatre company she had previously been working with.
They posted a tribute to the 67-year-old actress alongside a picture of the theatre and film star.
In a statement, translated from Ukrainian, the theatre company wrote on social media: ‘Bright memory to the talented actress! There is no forgiveness for the enemy that has come to our land!’.
The Kyiv Post has also confirmed the actor’s passing, adding on social media that she had been ‘murdered in Kyiv during the war’.
According to the theatre’s website, Shvets had graduated from Ivan Franko theatre school in 1975 and had a career that spanned decades. She had also been the recipient of the Merited Artist of Ukraine award, one of Ukraine’s highest and most coveted honours.
Russian troops have continued to attack the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and launched a barrage of missiles against an aircraft repair installation at an airport on the outskirts of the western city of Lviv, close to the Polish border. One person was reported wounded.
Ukraine said it had shot down two of six missiles in the volley, which came from the Black Sea.
The early morning barrage of missiles on Lviv’s edge was the closest strike yet to the centre of the city, which has become a crossroads for people fleeing from other parts of Ukraine and for others entering to deliver aid or fight.
In city after city around Ukraine, hospitals, schools, and buildings where people sought safety have been attacked. Rescue workers were still searching for survivors in the ruins of a theatre that served as a shelter when it was blasted by a Russian airstrike on Wednesday in the besieged southern city of Mariupol.
Ludmyla Denisova, the Ukrainain parliament’s human rights commissioner, said on Friday that 130 people had survived the theatre bombing.
‘As of now, we know that 130 people have been evacuated, but according to our data, there are still more than 1,300 people in these basements, in this bomb shelter,’ Denisova told Ukrainian television. ‘We pray that they will all be alive, but so far there is no information about them.’