Amid the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, a Ukrainian actress Oksana Shvets has been killed in a rocket attack on a residential building in Kyiv, The Hollywood Reporter reported on Friday.
Confirming the demise of Oksana, her troupe, the Young Theatre, issued a statement that read, “During the rocket shelling of a residential building in Kyiv, a well-deserved artist of Ukraine Oksana Shvets was killed.”
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According to The Hollywood Reporter, Oksana was 67. She had been awarded one of Ukraine’s highest artistic honours, the title of which roughly translates as ‘Honoured Artist of Ukraine’.
Russia began a military operation in Ukraine on February 24 responding to calls for help from the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in countering the aggression of Ukrainian troops.
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The Russian Defence Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only.
According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, almost 600 civilians have been killed and more than 1,000 injured in Ukraine since the start of the conflict.
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Ukraine does have a network of biological labs that have gotten funding and research support from the US. But they are owned and operated by Ukraine and are part of an initiative called the Biological Threat Reduction Program that aims to reduce the likelihood of deadly outbreaks, whether natural or manmade.
The US efforts date back to work in the 1990s to dismantle the former Soviet Union’s program for weapons of mass destruction.