The image of their lifeless bodies, bloodied on the sidewalk of a city on the outskirts of Kiev, surrounded by rubble and Ukrainian military who unsuccessfully try to rescue them, shocked the world and became the symbol of the indiscriminate massacre of Ukrainian civilians by of Moscow. Serhiy Perebyinis, husband of the woman killed by Russian mortars in Irpin along with her two children, now wants to tell that there was life behind that image of death. His, that of Tetiana, Mykyta, Alisa and many other innocent victims of this war. “The whole world must know what is happening here,” said the 43-year-old software programmer to the New York Times, the newspaper that a few days ago published on the front page, not without sparking controversy, the snapshot of his photojournalist Lynsey Addario.
“My dog is dead too, now I’m looking for the other one”, here’s Sergiy’s hope to whom a missile killed his wife and two children in Ukraine
FULVIO CERUTTI
He and Tetiana, his age, were high school friends but only got engaged after they met again on the dance floor, in a club in Kiev. They married young in 2001 and their eldest son was born shortly thereafter. A life like many others that in 2014 suffered its first shock. The Perebyinis are forced to leave Donetsk and the burning Donbass after the revolt of the separatists stirred up by Moscow. They flee to the capital and rebuild their lives in Irpin, a residential town on the outskirts of Kiev. They take a half-up country house with a couple of friends, Tetiana begins working as an accountant for a large company that has offices in London and California. In her spare time she devotes herself to her great passions, gardening and skiing. She had just returned from a weekend in the Georgia mountains when their life takes a second shock, this time deadly.
Irpin, the mortar rounds that killed a mother and two children: the moment of the explosion
Russia invades Ukraine and the Perebyinis family falls back into the nightmare already experienced eight years ago. Serhiy remains stranded in the east of the country, where he had gone to take care of his mother who is sick with Covid. He confessed to the New York Times that he had spoken to his wife on the phone shortly before her tragedy asking her to forgive her for not being there with them to protect them. She replied “don’t worry, I’ll make it.” Instead she didn’t make it. The last days before the desperate escape attempt were terrible, filled with anguish and uncertainty. Tetiana and her children were hiding in the basement. Mykyta, the eldest, 18, slept during the day and stayed up all night to guard his mother and sister and hear the sirens. Tetiana’s company had offered her to leave Ukraine a few days before her, even offering her a paid apartment in Poland. But she hesitated, worried that her mother with Alzheimer’s would not be able to make the journey. Until Saturday, when she and her children try their first escape. They start loading up their Chevrolet mini van but then see a tank go by and give up. The next day is the decisive one: she, her two children, her mother and her father leave for Kiev at 7 am. At a certain point they are forced to leave the car and continue on foot.
The Kiev massacre: “Me, surprised by the roar. Then those bodies on the ground “
gianluca panella
The rest is the sad ending of the story. Tetiana’s parents survive Russian mortar rounds that rain down on them as they cross the road to reach a bombed-out bridge. She, her kids, the church volunteer who accompanied them and their little dog are killed. Having no news for hours, Serhiy starts calling the cell phones of his children and his wife. Useless, they ring but no one answers. Eventually on Twitter he sees that photo. He recognizes their suitcases and backpacks. Thus he discovers, on social media, that her family has been exterminated. To return to Kiev he had to pass through Poland and at the border the Russian soldiers stopped him for checks, it seemed they wanted to arrest him.
“My family died in what you call a special operation and we are war. You can do with me what you want, I have nothing more to lose ». Eventually they let him pass and Serhiy was able to reunite with his beloved Tetiana, Mykyta, Alisa. “Now the whole world must know what’s going on here.”