Ukrainian soldiers try to save Anatoly Berezhnyi, the only one still with his wrist, in Irpin, west of Kyiv. Photo Lynsey Addario / The New York Times.
kyiv, Ukraine – Like thousands of others in Ukraine, they were killed by the rain of metal fragments that exploded from an artillery shell.
When it struck, Tetiana Perebyinis, 43, and her two children, Mykyta, 18, and Alisa, 9, along with a church volunteer who had helped the family escape the fighting, were alone. about ten meters away.
They had no chance.
Ivan Drahun, with his stepson Volodymir, near where his wife Maryna is buried, in Bucha, Ukraine. Photo Daniel Berehulak / The New York Times.
All four collapsed to the sidewalk, dead or unconscious and dying.
The family dog, also beaten and injured, howled in terror.
Blood splattered on the face of church volunteer Anatoly Berezhnyi, 26.
But the scene of the bodies, which lay motionless next to a bridge they had passed safely, he was strangely silent.
The deaths were typical of a largely artillery-fought war in which civilians are killed daily, but were also notable for having resonated far beyond the Kiev suburb of Irpin, where they were killed.
A photograph of the family and Berezhnyi, taken by a photographer from New York TimesLynsey Addario, summarizes the indiscriminate killing of civilians by Russian forces.
The family’s life and their final hours were later described in an interview with Perebyinis’ husband, Serhiy.
The family had already fled the war once, fleeing to Kiev since separatist conflict supported by Russia in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Since then they had built a solid bourgeois life; she worked as an accountant, he as a computer programmer.
Since the early days of the war in February, the bodies of the dead have been seen regularly but usually anonymously, thrown onto the sidewalks after the bombings, lined up in body bags at collection points, such as hands or feet protruding from the ground. in mass graves.
The death of Tetiana Perebyinis and her children has been documented from the time of her death and in subsequent talks with relatives.
Bursting into tears for the only time in the interview about his dead family, just days after the artillery attack, Serhiy Perebyinis said he told his wife the night before his death that I was sorry I hadn’t been with her.
“I said:
‘Forgive me if I could not defend you,’ “he said.
“He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go out.'”
As for Addario’s photograph, he later said he heard almost disrespectful stop and take it, but that it was important to record the moment.
Reprinted on the front page of newspapers and news sites around the world, it has become a game changer in the subject for accurately portraying the costs of war on innocent civilians.
Asked if he claimed to show his family’s death in this way, Serhiy Perebyinis said yes.
“The whole world should know what’s going on here,” he said.
c.2022 The New York Times Company
Andrew E Kramer
Source: Clarin
