The town council of Hostomel, northwest of the capital, Kyiv, said in a post on Facebook that Yuriy Prylypko, and two of his associates, Ivan Zorya and Ruslan Karpenko, were shot dead as they tried to help those still in the town.

With its nearby airfield, Hostomel has been fought over since the beginning of the war on February 24. Most of the original 16,000 inhabitants have fled.

Separately on March 7, the regional prosecutor’s office in the south of Ukraine said that Russian military forces opened fire at an anti-Russia demonstration in the town of Nova Kakhovka the previous day, killing one protester and wounding seven other demonstrators.