2023-03-18 14:41 update: 2023-03-21, 13:28
Photo: PAP/Viacheslav Ratynskyi
A Pole has been wounded in Ukraine, the Polish ambassador to the country has confirmed.
"I confirm that we have received information about a wounded Polish citizen," Bartosz Cichocki said on Saturday. "They are being offered medical assistance and care."
An aide to Ukraine's interior minister, Anton Gerashchenko, said earlier in the day that a vehicle carrying two Poles had been hit by a Russian shell in the Donetsk province.
"A Russian shell hit the bus of Polish volunteers who brought humanitarian aid in Chasiv Yar," Gerashchenko wrote on Twitter on Saturday morning.
"Two volunteers were wounded," he went on to say, adding that "one of them was evacuated to a Dnipro hospital by Life Saving Center."
The picture attached to the tweet shows a white van with a gaping hole just behind the driver's seat. The van bears a sticker with the slogan 'Helping Ukraine' and the flags of Ukraine, Poland and Latvia.
A representative of the Nehemiasz humanitarian initiative of which the two volunteers were members told PAP on Saturday that the Russian shell hit the van on Thursday afternoon, wounding six people, including two Poles.
"They both live in Poznan (city in western Poland - PAP)," the representative said. "One of them is in a stable but serious condition, while the second is in a lighter condition.
"It was our 22nd trip," the representative went on to say. "They weren't there for the first time, either. One of them had been there since 2014, so he is a very experienced person." (PAP)
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