The toll of French people dead in Ukraine increased on Thursday February 1st. Two humanitarian workers were killed during a strike on Beryslav, a small town located on the north bank of the Dnieper River, near the front line, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Friday. According to the Quai d’Orsay, three other French people were also injured in the incident. They were on a mission with the NGO Entraide protestante suisse (EPER). “It is with great sadness that Swiss Protestant Entraide confirms the shocking news of a fatal attack which occurred yesterday, Thursday February 1, in the south-east of Ukraine,” said the organization in a communicated, specifying that “a group of collaborators was attacked around 2:30 p.m. during a humanitarian intervention”.
A few hours later, the new head of French diplomacy, Stéphane Séjourné, affirmed on X that they were indeed “French humanitarians”. They “paid for their commitment to the Ukrainians with their lives”, he wrote, denouncing “Russian barbarism”. President Emmanuel Macron denounced a “cowardly and unworthy act”. Friday evening, the anti-terrorism prosecution (Pnat), requested by Agence France Presse, indicated that it was opening an investigation after the death of the two French humanitarian workers.
Last September, the United Nations Security Council met at the request of Ecuador and France to examine the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, 21 months after the start of the conflict. “Humanitarians have not been spared and the operating environment has become increasingly dangerous as the war in Ukraine continues,” said Ramesh Rajasingham, director of the Office of Coordination at the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs. Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The number of aid workers killed more than tripled, from 4 in 2022 to 14 in September 2023.
Three French journalists
Among the victims of this war which has lasted for almost two years, we find many journalists. At least eleven died covering this conflict, including three French people, according to a count by Reporter Without Borders (RSF). On March 14, 2022, journalist photographer and image reporter Pierre Zakrzewski died in the town of Horenka, northwest of kyiv, when his vehicle was fired upon. Of French and Irish nationality, Pierre Zakrzewski worked for the American channel Fox News. Aged 55, he lived in London with his wife and children and was used to war zones, such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
On May 9, 2023, the video coordinator of Agence France Presse died during a rocket attack in eastern Ukraine, near the besieged town of Bakhmut. He was 32 years old. A wave of sympathy poured in the day after his death, accompanied by messages of condolence from all walks of life. On July 14, he was posthumously decorated as a Knight of the Legion of Honor.
Two weeks later, on May 30, 2023, Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, journalist for BFMTV, died while following a humanitarian mission in eastern Ukraine. He was killed by shrapnel during a Russian bombing, according to the head of the Luhansk military administration. He had worked for BFMTV for six years and was then carrying out his second mission in Ukraine, as a journalist and image reporter (JRI). He also received the Legion of Honor posthumously.
How many fighters?
Added to these civilians are the deaths of French people who went to fight alongside the Ukrainians, notably in the international legion created by Volodymyr Zelensky in the aftermath of the Russian offensive to bring together foreign fighters. On June 1, 2022, Wilfried Blériot, 32, originally from Bayeux (Calvados), was the first Frenchman to officially die on the Ukrainian front, according to the Quai d’Orsay. A few days later, on June 25, Adrien Dugay-Leyoudec, 20 years old, a member of the same legion, succumbed to his injuries after 25 days in a coma.
In March 2023, on the night of the 20th to the 21st, Kevin David, originally from the Angers region, was shot and killed in Bakhmout. Aged 29, the young man had resigned from his job as a delivery driver and left everything to go fight in Ukraine, according to France 3. According to French authorities, he was the sixth Frenchman killed as a combatant on the front.
But this count is particularly difficult to keep given the lack of information on the exact number of these French fighters who left for Ukraine or Russia. According to information from World, there were 320 French people and French residents who joined the ranks of the Ukrainian or Russian army in June 2023. This monitoring is all the more complex as Russia is carrying out disinformation operations on this subject. The last date was January 17, 2024: Moscow claimed to have killed around sixty foreign fighters, including French mercenaries, in the bombing of a building in Kharkiv. Information immediately rejected by Paris, which ensures that lists of “dead French mercenaries” are massively relayed by pro-Kremlin activists who would like to show a “growing involvement of Paris in the conflict in Ukraine”.