Ukrainian actress Oksana Shvets killed in Russian rocket attack aged 67

Shvets was one of the country's most accomplished performing artists

Ukrainian actress Oksana Shvets was killed in a Russian rocket attack on her home in Kyiv. Photo: Twitter

Ukrainian actress Oksana Shvets has died after the residential building where she lived in Kyiv was reportedly struck by Russian rockets. She was 67.

Shvets’s death was announced by her colleagues at the Young Theatre, who expressed their “unrepairable grief”.

“Bright memory to the talented actress!” the statement said.

Born in 1955, Shvets was one of Ukraine’s most accomplished performing artists, with a career that spanned decades across film and theatre.

As well as working with the Young Theatre, Shvets had worked at the Ternopil Music and Drama Theatre and the Kyiv Theatre of Satire.

Shvets’s death follows that of another Ukrainian actor, Pasha Lee, who was killed earlier this month, aged 33, after enlisting in the Ukrainian army’s Territorial Defence Forces.

Lee’s death was announced by Ukraine’s Odesa International Film Festival on Facebook.

In his last post on Instagram, Lee was wearing a military uniform.

"For the last 48 hours, there is an opportunity to sit down and take a picture of how we are being bombed, and we are smiling because we will manage and everything will be UKRAINE, WE ARE WORKING!” he said.

In another post, he called on Ukrainians to join him in the war.

The actor, who was also a singer and TV host, did voice-over work for Ukrainian versions of movies, including The Hobbit and The Lion King.

Meanwhile, rescuers are hunting for survivors in the rubble of a bombed theatre in the besieged city of Mariupol, according to Ukraine’s ombudswoman Ludmyla Denisova.

The Kharkiv region has seen heavy bombardment as stalled Russian forces try to advance in the area.

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