Annie Lewis Marffy, a 69-year-old British humanitarian volunteer, was killed by a Russian drone strike in the Donetsk region as she attempted to deliver aid, her family said.
Lewis Marffy traveled from her home near Exeter in the UK to deliver supplies to Kramatorsk – the de facto capital of Ukraine’s Donetsk region – in a mission arranged by non-profit organization Aid Ukraine UK in late May.
She was joined by a former Welsh soldier with frontline experience, whom Aid Ukraine tasked with “babysitting” Lewis Marffy, but he soon fell ill and had to return to the UK for treatment.
Lewis Marffy was advised to deliver the car only as far as Lviv, but she was apparently insistent on carrying out the original drop in Kramatorsk, Aid Ukraine said.
She drove on to Kramatorsk, last making contact with her family on June 8 and reaching out to the Aid Ukraine organization on June 10 to say that she was 55 minutes from her destination.
According to The Times, organizers said that they then lost touch with Lewis Marffy, who had driven onto the Bakhmut highway, often called the “road of death” due to its exposure to frequent Russian drone attacks.
Katarzyna Bylok, who founded Aid Ukraine, said that she put a query on Telegram for Lewis Marffy’s whereabouts and received a response from the Kramatorsk district police immediately, according to The Guardian.
They provided video footage reportedly confirming her death, which is said to have shown Lewis Marffy being hunted by a Russian first-person view (FPV) drone, which struck her green Toyota RAV4 and left her with fatal injuries.
Bylok said that evidence reviewed by her team confirmed “1,001%” that Lewis Marffy had been killed and classified the incident as a war crime.
Kramatorsk police said in a report that “the body of volunteer Annie Margaret Elizabeth Lewis Marffy remains in an area of active hostilities, making it impossible to conduct evacuation measures.”
Since her body cannot be recovered, local authorities have been unable to issue a death certificate, and Lewis Marffy’s children have been told by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) that it is beyond their jurisdiction.
The FCDO said it was down to Ukrainian authorities to provide a death certificate, but Bylok said that without one, Lewis Marffy’s family is stuck in “red tape limbo.”
In a tribute, Lewis Marffy’s son Charlie described his mother as “amazing, witty, kind, intelligent, adventurous” in quotes given to the BBC.
“She was irreplaceable,” he told the British outlet, adding that she had helped at soup kitchens and refugee kitchens and cared for animals in her spare time. “I feel very sad that she’s not here anymore but I’m very proud of who she was.”
“I never saw her scared, she was totally fearless and maybe that contributed to her death in some way. She was a force and it was her decision,” he added.
Bylok said the process of recovering Lewis Marffy’s body could take years.
“In a kill zone, where her remains are, it is impossible to recover them because whoever you send will also die,” she said.
“It leaves her family in a horrible red tape limbo,” Bylok added. “They will never get her body. But what they need is the ability to close her affairs.”