A female Ukrainian combat medic was killed in action in the war zone of Donbas on Feb. 1, 2020, according to the Ukrainian military.
The incident took place area near the frontline town of Novotoshkivske in Luhansk Oblast, some 600 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
“The woman came under fire while delivering medicine to a combat post and sustained numerous fatal fragmentation wounds,” the Feb. 1 military communique says.
Later in the day, the 93rd Mechanized Infantry Brigade, a Ukrainian combat formation currently deployed to the mentioned frontline section, identified the killed medic as Sergeant Klavdiya Sytnyk, originally from the town of Zachepylivka in Kharkiv Oblast.
“She was killed by a penetrating left-side chest wound as she was carrying medicine to a sick soldier,” the combat formation said on its official Facebook page.
“At that moment, the frontline section was being fired upon with mortars, grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and light arms. Experts are yet to ascertain what kind of projectile fragment killed our medic.”
Klavdiya Sytnyk was 33 years old.
According to her combat formation, Sytnyk was trained as a civilian paramedic and used to work as an ambulance assistant. She enlisted in the Armed Forces in February 2017 to serve with the 54th Mechanized Brigade and then joined the 93rd Brigade during the formation’s training at the Yavoriv boot camp in Lviv Oblast.
She is reportedly outlived by a daughter born in 2008, her parents and a disabled sister.
Nearly 4,000 Ukrainian combatants have been killed in action since the outbreak of Russia’s war in Donbas in the spring of 2014. In January 2020 alone, the Ukrainian military reported 11 fatalities. More than 111 soldiers and officers were killed in 2019.
