Two British citizens, Andrew Bagshaw and Chris Parry, left the town of Kramatorsk at 8 a.m. on January 6 and headed east towards the front lines of the war between Ukraine and Russia, Ukrainian police said.
According to an aid worker familiar with the matter, their mission was to evacuate an elderly woman in Soledar, a small town where Russian and Ukrainian forces were engaged in a bitter struggle.
They never returned.
Questions about their fate lingered until Tuesday, when Mr Parry’s family confirmed in a statement released by the British Foreign Office that “our beloved Chrissy” and Mr Bagshaw had been killed “attempting a humanitarian evacuation from Soledar”.
“His selfless determination to help the old, young and underprivileged there has made us and his extended family very proud,” the statement said.
The man’s vehicle is believed to have been struck by an artillery shell, although an investigation was ongoing, Mr Bagshaw’s parents said at a press conference. They feared such a result, they said, but are “very, very proud” of his work.
Mr Bagshaw, 47, and Mr Parry, 28, were part of an ad hoc cohort of foreigners with little to no combat experience who helped evacuate civilians from the front lines, acquaintances said. Several of the evacuations of Mr Parry and Mr Bagshaw were documented from journalistsincluding Arnaud De Decker who shared Recordings of Mr. Parry in Bakhmut days before he disappeared.
Her death was a stark reminder of the danger facing those whose work has become a lifeline in the Donbass, where many Ukrainians are trapped in some of the worst war zones Europe has seen since World War II.
On January 6, “the two men went to a really dangerous address,” said Grzegorz Rybak, a foreign volunteer who worked with both men and lived with Mr Bagshaw in Kramatorsk for two weeks. “And they didn’t come back.”
PMC Wagner, a notorious mercenary group fighting for Russia, claimed to have found one of the men’s bodies a week after their disappearance. The group posted photos of what appeared to be their passports on Telegram, along with a certificate identifying Mr Parry as a volunteer at the Pavlo Vyshniakov Foundation, a Kyiv-based charity that sends resources such as food and medical supplies to civilian, hospital and military groups. The foundation declined to comment.
Wagner’s claim could not be verified at the time, and Russian state media have since claimed without evidence that the men were mercenaries.
The war in Ukraine is a humanitarian dilemma. Conditions in some areas are too dangerous for residents to stay, or for many international organizations to allow their staff to venture in, said Abby Stoddard, a humanitarian policy analyst.
As such, some of the riskiest evacuations are carried out by independent volunteers – “in other words, those with the least resources to keep people safe,” Ms Stoddard said.
Bryan Stern, a US veteran who co-founded a humanitarian organization emergency operation, described the frontline evacuation effort in Ukraine as “free for all”. While foreign volunteers came to Ukraine with good intentions, most “had no idea what they were doing,” he said.
“So this is really a sad story,” he said.
Mr. Parry was a software developer who wanted to travel the world, his family said.
He announced this in early January local BBC station in Cornwall, where he grew up, that he “knew nothing” about Ukraine before the invasion but was “obsessed” with helping. He planned to enlist with foreign fighters, but since he had no combat experience, he bought a van instead and started working as an evacuation driver last March.
In an Instagram post Office Days after his arrival, Mr Parry wrote that he was concerned about a planned trip to Kharkiv because “everyone I’ve spoken to about it thinks there’s a very good chance I’m going to die.”
Mr Bagshaw was a British genetics researcher who was between jobs in Christchurch, New Zealand, last spring when he decided to go to Ukraine, wrote a photojournalist who met him New Zealand Herald in October. His family told reporters he believed “it was the moral right thing to do.”
Mr Rybak, who translated for the volunteers, said their ad hoc operation was largely run by a small community of English speakers in Kramatorsk. Neither Mr Parry nor Mr Bagshaw spoke Ukrainian or Russian, he said.
Mr Rybak said Ukrainians would contact local aid workers about relatives near Bakhmut and their addresses would be given to the volunteers, who would drive to the conflict zone to evacuate them, often in donated or crowd-funded vehicles. The trips have been unpredictable, Mr Rybak said, with addresses sometimes empty or local residents resisting the evacuation.
The men had plans for after the war. Mr Parry had a partner he wished to marry, Mr Rybak recalled, and Mr Bagshaw wanted to continue his scientific career.
“They wanted to live,” he says.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting.
