Ukrainian Anastasiia Yalanskaya killed after delivering food to dog shelter

A young Ukrainian woman was shot and killed while she was on her way back from delivering food to a dog shelter.

Anastasiia Yalanskaya was killed in Ukraine. Picture: Oleksandra Matviichuk/Twitter

A young Ukrainian woman was shot and killed while she was on her way back from delivering food to a dog shelter just outside Kyiv.

Anastasiia Yalanskaya was one of three volunteers delivering the food to Bucha, about 29 kilometres outside the Ukrainian capital. All three were killed, according to a news report.

Yalanskaya’s friends and family believe her car was deliberately targeted at close-range by Russian troops, the NY Post reports.

“I asked her to be extra cautious. That nowadays, a mistake costs extremely much,” her husband, Yevhen Yalanskyi, said.

“But she was helping everyone around. I asked her to think of evacuation but she did not listen.”

Anastasiia Yalanskaya was a volunteer.

Bucha has been in the crosshairs of Russian bombardment. The shelter Yalanskaya had been delivering to had gone three days without food when she made the trip.

Her final Instagram story, posted just hours before her death, shows her sitting in the back of a vehicle, smiling into the camera, beside bags of dog food.

Her car was found, riddled with bullets, not far from the house of one of the men she was volunteering with.

They had delivered the dog food and had almost gotten home when they were killed.

Yalanskaya’s body remains in a morgue in Bucha, because the fighting is so intense no one can get through, a friend told Global News.

“She was one of the best human beings I knew. She was committed to help, to help her friends and relatives and whoever needed help,” her husband said.

“She loved animals. We had a dog and a cat. She was the best partner I ever had.”

This story originally appeared on the NY Post and was republished with permission.

Originally published as Ukrainian Anastasiia Yalanskaya killed after delivering food to dog shelter