For hours, rescuers frantically dug to find the two-year-old son of Anastasia Komarista in the rubble of their building pulverized by Russian strikes on Friday in eastern Ukraine. They then looked for her husband.
Both were buried in the rain on Wednesday in a cemetery running down to a river outside the city of Sloviansk, not far from the frontline.
Anastasia Komarista, dressed all in black, begged her family, in front of their coffins, to forgive her for having survived.
“Forgive me! Forgive me! I don’t want to be here. I want to rest by your side,” she yelled, dazed and pale, supported by relatives.
“I prayed to God to save you!” Anastasia Komarista shouted, her eyes turned to the sky, which echoed the dull sounds of distant artillery fire.
His apartment was on the top floor of a Soviet-era building, in a quiet residential area.
Anastasia Komarista was nearby in a gym when the missiles hit.
Her husband Sergei, 29, was taking care of their son Maksym and his uncle had passed.
AFP journalists on the scene minutes after the attack heard a woman screaming and saw rescuers throw a charred stroller from the ruined fourth floor.
Concrete dust and shards of glass littered the street below, and plumes of black smoke billowed from houses hit by shrapnel spreading across the street.
Children’s pencil drawings and torn pages from school books mingled with the bits of concrete strewn on the ground, including around a playground in the yard.
The two-year-old child was pulled out alive from the rubble but died in the ambulance transporting him.
Easter decorations still hung at the church in Sloviansk, where around 100 people holding candles gathered to pay their last respects to Maksym and his father.
“This family has been struck by unspeakable grief,” said the priest who presided over the religious ceremony.
“Not just this family but the whole town. What words could bring any comfort in such a situation?”.
Maksym’s coffin, covered in blue and white silk, was so small it only took two men to carry it.
He had been placed, with that of his father, under a large mural representing the famous Basil-The-Blessed Cathedral, on Red Square in Moscow, the Orthodox Church of Sloviansk still dependent on the Russian Church.
Sergei, who repaired phones and sold accessories, played for a local football team, reads an online obituary, in which his friends describe him as “laid-back” and “empathetic “.
“We hope you are now with Pelé and Maradona. There are no words to describe our grief, our loss,” his friends wrote in a message.
Eight missiles were fired towards Sloviansk on Friday, killing 15 and injuring dozens.
This city, which had around 110,000 inhabitants before the war, is part of the industrial region of Donetsk, which Russian President Vladimir Putin claims as part of Russia.
The Kremlin has repeatedly assured that Russian forces were not targeting residential areas and that kyiv was responsible for prolonging the suffering of civilians in Ukraine by refusing negotiations.
Besides Maksym, Ukrainian prosecutors estimate that the Russian invasion caused the deaths of at least 470 children.
President Volodymyr Zelensky called Friday’s bombardment “brutal” and yet another illustration of how Russia is “ruining and destroying all life”.
Before the burial, the priest nevertheless urged the tearful audience to believe in a better future.
“A period of peace will surely come. This sorrow will surely pass.”
19/04/2023 20:59:11 – Sloviansk (Ukraine) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
