ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece said on Saturday that six Greek nationals had been killed and six others wounded by Russian bombing near Mariupol in Ukraine, and that it had summoned Russia’s ambassador to the foreign ministry on Monday after a verbal demarche.
The bombing took place in the outskirts of Sartana and Bugas villages and one of those injured was a child, the foreign ministry said.
“The death of our nationals creates grief and anger for this unacceptable Russian attack against civilians,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a statement.
The foreign ministry condemned the continuing attacks against civilians, expressing its “deepest grief” in a statement after reporting four expat deaths in Bugas on top of two killed in Sartana earlier.
At a meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier this month, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias stressed the need to protect the Greek expatriate community in Ukraine.
Russian forces pounded Ukrainian cities with artillery and cruise missiles on Saturday for a third day running but the capital Kyiv remained in Ukrainian hands.
(Reporting by George Georgiopoulos; Editing by Christina Fincher and Clelia Oziel)
