Friday, August 08, 2025

Two young Ukrainian sisters and their mother killed by Russia

From AFP / Yahoo!News:

"Kyiv buries soldier's wife and daughters killed in Russian attack

AFP
Residents of Kyiv piled flowers and portraits of those killed beneath the debris of a nine-storey building gutted in a Russian attack (Roman PILIPEY)
Roman PILIPEY/AFP/AFP

Men in military uniform shouldered the three white coffins out of a schoolyard in Kyiv on Tuesday, carrying a Ukrainian mother and her two children killed by the Russians to be buried.

Residents held each other and wept as they bid a final farewell to their neighbours, who died at dawn on Friday, when a barrage of Russian drones and missiles pounded the Ukrainian capital for hours.

Across a leafy park next to the school, flowers, toys, and portraits of those killed were laid beneath the remains of a nine-storey residential building gutted in the attack, which killed at least 31 people.

"It is difficult to imagine the grief of our brother, who lost two little daughters and his beloved wife in an instant," said the military unit of Igor Gumeniuk, the serviceman whose family was buried.

Local media reported that Irina and her children Anastassia, 13, and Alina, 10, had fled the fighting in the eastern Donetsk region -- where Russia has concentrated its firepower -- before settling in Kyiv.

"Alina and Nastya were sincere, kind and bright girls. We will remember their smiles, their kind hearts, their desire to live and learn," the girls' school that held the ceremony wrote on Facebook.

One of Irina's final social media posts from last month showed the family meeting in eastern Ukraine with Igor, an active serviceman.

"We were happy together all day for the first time in eight months," she wrote on Facebook, alongside pictures of the family relaxing by a river..."

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The two girls and their mother were killed in the same attack I wrote about in my previous post. Because of the relentless effort of Russian military to exterminate civilian Ukrainians, it is not uncommon that Ukrainian soldiers at the front line survive while their loved ones in peaceful cities far from the front line are murdered by Russia.

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