The acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, confirmed this Sunday the death of the Spanish Emma Igual, 32 years old, director of the NGO Road to Relief, in a Russian attack on her vehicle in Ukraine.
The aid worker was traveling on a road near the town of Chasiv Yar, in Donetsk province, when A projectile fell on the car. The event took place this Saturday in the Bakhmut area. Albares initially stated that the Government of Spain has received “verbal confirmation” of Emma’s death and has indicated that “certified confirmation from the Ukrainian authorities” is expected.
The NGO Road to Relief has reported through its Instagram account that Four members of his team were traveling in the vehicle: the German doctor Ruben Mawick, the Swedish volunteer Johan Mathias Tyr, the Canadian Anthony ‘Tonko’ Ihnat and the young Spanish woman, Emma Igual.
As revealed by the NGO in the statement, the first two volunteers (Ruben and Johan) are injured, while they have Ihnat’s death confirmed who was driving the vehicle, and Igual’s status was unknown at the time of publication.
Emma Igual, was director and co-founder of Road to Relief, an NGO that since 2022 helped Ukraine by evacuating civilians from the front and delivering humanitarian aid in the areas most affected by the war.
First Spaniard killed in the war
The first Spaniard killed in the Ukrainian war was the Mallorcan Angel Adrover He was 31 years old, he was a Telecommunications engineer and lived in Holland. The media reported his death on June 21, 2022, but neither the Government of Spain nor that of Mallorca knew that the Spanish citizen was fighting.
“He was a brave person, I admire his courage”was the message that his mother received on the phone, written by a colonel of the Ukrainian Army, according to information collected by the newspaper ‘Última Hora’.
Dolores Martínez, Adrover’s mother, explained to ‘Última Hora’ that Ángel informed her that he was going to work as a volunteer and to carry out humanitarian work. Although the young man did cooperate for a time in the telecommunications area in Lviv, she did not know that he later made the decision to collaborate with the Ukrainian forces.
The last time Martínez spoke with his son on WhatsApp was on June 13, 2022. A day later he wrote to him again, but did not answer.
Adrover game in the Sports Club of San Cayetano who, upon learning the “sad news”, decided to pay tribute to the young man on their social networks and also provide all their support to family and friends.
What happened to Mariano García Calatayud?
Mariano Garcia Calatayud He is a 74-year-old Spanish retiree who went to Ukraine in 2014 to serve as a volunteer in humanitarian tasks after the war in Donbas and the annexation of Crimea to Russia.
He is known in Ukraine as Mario. This former official of the City Council of the Valencian town of Carlet helped the Ukrainian Army by delivering food, clothing and medicine to soldiers. Mariano told ‘ABC’, on March 1, 2022, that they told him that “they would kill to support Ukraine». “But I didn’t care, I wanted to help the town that welcomed more than 3,600 children after the Spanish Civil War,” he said.
Although his family, concerned about his situation and his life, insisted that he return, Mariano refused every time, he had no intention of leaving Ukraine, which he intends to “help until death”
Mariano’s trace was lost on March 19, 2022, which is why his family reported a few days later that the Valencian He had been captured by the Russian army in the city of Kherson, where he lived with his wife.
Several witnesses claimed that they saw how the soldiers took him away in a car after one of the protests in which he had participated in that territory. Since then, Mariano is in the Simferopol prison in Crimea, with little information about his status.
It was not until the beginning of April 2023 when, for the first time, Russia admitted through an official document that has him imprisoned for reasons of “participation in the commission of actions intended to cause damage to the security of the Federation in the course of a military operation.”
For the Kremlin, the Valencian is a “dangerous foreign fighter deceived by Ukrainian and Western propaganda”, which is why he allegedly He would already have been in pretrial detention for 18 months.
Apparently, and according to sources, Mariano is in a state “very weak”, due to his heart problems. Meanwhile, the Government of Spain has not given new details about his possible release.