LYON: A woman nicknamed “The Woman in Pink” after her body was found in Spain two decades ago has finally been identified, Interpol said Thursday.
The case is the latest to be solved by the international police organization’s cold cases campaign “Identify Me,” created in 2023 and tasked with identifying women who were found dead across Europe in recent decades, murdered or in suspicious circumstances.
The woman was named as Liudmila Zavada, a Russian national, Interpol said.
She was found dead in 2005 by a road in Viladecans, Spain, close to Barcelona, dressed in a pink floral top, pink trousers, and pink shoes, and had been dead for less than 24 hours.
Police believed the body had been moved in the 12 hours prior to discovery, suggesting foul play. But her identity remained a mystery.
Last year Spanish police, having no new leads, handed the case to the Identify Me campaign, which Interpol coordinates in collaboration with Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain.
A breakthrough in the recent case came this year when police in Turkiye ran the woman’s fingerprints through a national biometric database, resulting in a match with Zavada, aged 31 at the time of her death.
The match was subsequently confirmed through kinship DNA analysis using the DNA of one of her close relatives.
“After 20 years, an unknown woman has been given back her name,” said Interpol Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza in a statement.
The case is the third success for the Identify Me appeal.
In 2023 it led to the identification of Rita Roberts, a British woman who was found murdered in Antwerp in 1992, thanks to relatives recognizing her tattoo.
Earlier this year, 33-year-old Ainoha Izaga Ibieta Lima was identified when Paraguayan authorities matched fingerprints uploaded by Spain against their own national databases.
The Identify Me campaign is still trying to solve 44 cases of unidentified women.
Interpol identifies ‘Woman in Pink’ after 20 years
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Interpol identifies ‘Woman in Pink’ after 20 years
- The case is the latest to be solved by the international police organization’s cold cases campaign “Identify Me,” created in 2023
- The woman was named as Liudmila Zavada, a Russian national, Interpol said
Trump says Zelensky ‘isn’t ready’ yet to accept US-authored proposal to end Russia-Ukraine war
- Trump said he was “disappointed” and suggested that the Ukrainian leader is holding up the talks from moving forward
- He also claimed Russia is “fine with it” even though Putin last week had said that aspects of Trump’s proposal were unworkable
KYIV, Ukraine: President Donald Trump on Sunday claimed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “isn’t ready” to sign off on a US-authored peace proposal aimed at ending the Russia-Ukraine war.
Trump was critical of Zelensky after US and Ukrainian negotiators completed three days of talks on Saturday aimed at trying to narrow differences on the US administration’s proposal. But in an exchange with reporters on Sunday night, Trump suggested that the Ukrainian leader is holding up the talks from moving forward.
“I’m a little bit disappointed that President Zelensky hasn’t yet read the proposal, that was as of a few hours ago. His people love it, but he hasn’t,” Trump claimed in an exchange with reporters before taking part in the Kennedy Center Honors. The president added, “Russia is, I believe, fine with it, but I’m not sure that Zelensky’s fine with it. His people love it it. But he isn’t ready.”
To be certain, Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn’t publicly expressed approval for the White House plan. In fact, Putin last week had said that aspects of Trump’s proposal were unworkable, even though the original draft heavily favored Moscow.
Trump has had a hot-and-cold relationship with Zelensky since riding into a second White House term insisting that the war was a waste of US taxpayer money. Trump has also repeatedly urged the Ukrainians to cede land to Russia to bring an end to a now nearly four-year conflict he says has cost far too many lives.
Zelensky said Saturday he had a “substantive phone call” with the American officials engaged in the talks with a Ukrainian delegation in Florida. He said he had been given an update over the phone by US and Ukrainian officials at the talks.
“Ukraine is determined to keep working in good faith with the American side to genuinely achieve peace,” Zelensky wrote on social media.
Trump’s criticism of Zelensky came as Russia on Sunday welcomed the Trump administration’s new national security strategy in comments by the Kremlin spokesman published by Russia’s Tass news agency.
Dmitry Peskov said the updated strategic document, which spells out the administration’s core foreign policy interests, was largely in line with Moscow’s vision.
“There are statements there against confrontation and in favor of dialogue and building good relations,” he said, adding that Russia hopes this would lead to “further constructive cooperation with Washington on the Ukrainian settlement.”
The document released Friday by the White House said the US wants to improve its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow being treated as a global pariah and that ending the war is a core US interest to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia.”
Speaking on Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum, Trump’s outgoing Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, said efforts to end the war were in “the last 10 meters.”
He said a deal depended on the two outstanding issues of “terrain, primarily the Donbas,” and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Russia controls most of Donbas, its name for the Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk regions, which, along with two southern regions, it illegally annexed three years ago. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is in an area that has been under Russian control since early in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and is not in service. It needs reliable power to cool its six shutdown reactors and spent fuel, to avoid any catastrophic nuclear incidents.
Kellogg, who is due to leave his post in January, was not present at the talks in Florida.
Separately, officials said the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany would participate in a meeting with Zelensky in London on Monday.
As the three days of talks wrapped up, Russian missile, drone and shelling attacks overnight and Sunday killed at least four people in Ukraine.
A man was killed in a drone attack on Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region Saturday night, local officials said, while a combined missile and drone attack on infrastructure in the central city of Kremenchuk caused power and water outages. Kremenchuk is home to one of Ukraine’s biggest oil refineries and is an industrial hub.
Kyiv and its Western allies say Russia is trying to cripple the Ukrainian power grid and deny civilians access to heat, light and running water for a fourth consecutive winter, in what Ukrainian officials call “weaponizing” the cold.
Three people were killed and 10 others wounded Sunday in shelling by Russian troops in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.
