A man whose wife and two children were dead with mortar fire Ukraine while they were trying to flee he went to Kyiv on Wednesday to bury them, but he said their funerals should be postponed because the depots are full of civilians.
Sergii Perebeinis was not with his family when they died on Monday in a civilian refugee corridor while trying to flee the suburb of Irpin to the capital. The California company for which Tatiana Perebeinis, 43, worked helped her husband return to Kyiv.
“Trying to hold on, but it’s very difficult,” Perebeinis posted on Facebook. “Fourth day of walking, thousands of miles of road.”
Tatiana Perebeinis’ body is “lying in a black bag on the floor” of an overflowing morgue, he said. The family’s dogs also died, he said.
He posted a picture of himself holding photographs of his wife and children.
Tatiana Perebeinis was chief accountant of SE Ranking, a London-based Silicon Valley startup and a large workforce in Kyiv. Her 9-year-old daughter, Alise, and her 18-year-old son, Nikita, also died.
“There are no words to describe our pain or to repair our pain,” the company said in a Facebook post. “But for us, it’s crucial not to let Tania and her children Alise and Nikita be just statistics. Her family fell victim to the unprovoked fire against civilians, which under any law is a crime against humanity “.
The company said that many Ukrainians are part of its team.
“Not only do we read about the Russian invasion in the news, we witness it every day,” he said. “And we know for a fact that the nature of the actions of the Russian army is criminal and inhumane. We condemn any attempt to justify it.”
Photographs spread around the world showed their bodies lying next to their suitcases and a dog transport.
“I met with correspondents, witnesses to these events. They handed me some of the personal items left on the street near the bodies,” Perebeinis wrote.
Andriy Dubchak / AP
Russia has denied attacking civilians, although airstrikes affected three Ukrainian hospitals on Wednesday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said efforts were being made to evacuate some 18,000 people from stormed cities in the Kyiv region to the capital. He said some 35,000 civilians have used humanitarian corridors to flee the fighting.
A co-worker, Anastasia Avetysian, told the New York Times that SE Ranking had provided emergency evacuation funds to its employees and Tatiana Perebeinis had been distributing them to them.
“We were all in touch with her,” Avetysian said. “Even when he was hiding in the basement, he was optimistic and joked to our chat group that now the company would have to do a special operation to get them out, such as ‘Save Private Ryan’.”
Tatiana Perebeinis “was a very kind, brave and courageous woman with a great sense of humor, she always encouraged everyone around her, she was really like a big sister to all of us,” said Ksenia Khirvonina, spokeswoman for SE Ranking. San Francisco Chronicle of Dubai, where he fled Ukraine on February 23.
“I always had answers to all our questions, even the most stupid ones, about personal finance or taxes or how to upgrade your visa cards; I had answers to everything,” Khirvonina said.
Tatiana Perebeinis stayed in Irpin, where she lived, when the Russian invasion began because her mother was ill and her 18-year-old son had to stay in the country in case she needed him to defend him, Khirvonina said.
He had started college this year.
“She always talked about him, how smart he was,” Khirvonina said. “She was a great mother, giving her children everything she could.”
The family’s apartment building was bombed the day before he died, forcing them into a basement with no heat or food, and they finally decided to flee to Kyiv, Khirvonina said.
“But then Russian troops began firing on innocent civilians,” he said.
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