A father returned to Ukraine after knowing that his family has died by the shelling of the Russian army.

Serhiy Perebyinis, 43, the husband and father of the Ukrainian woman and two children that were killed by mortar fire as they tried to escape shelling outside Kyiv last Sunday have learned of his family’s murder on Twitter.

Mom Tatiana Perebeinis, 43, with two kids, Mykyta, 18, and Alisa, 9, on the guidance of Anatoly Berezhnyi, 26, a church volunteer, who was helping them escape were killed by Russian forces as they ran across a damaged bridge in Irpin.

Serhiy wasn’t with the family when they died in a civilian refugee corridor. The California company that Tatiana is working for has helped her husband return to Kyiv. Serhiy said: “Trying to hold on but it’s really hard.”

On his Facebook account he posted: “Fourth day on my feet, thousands of kilometers of road,” with an image of himself holding photographs of his wife and children. He said that Tatiana’s body is “lying in a black bag on the floor” of an overflowing morgue, the family’s dogs has also died.

Tatiana was the chief accountant for SE Ranking, a Silicon Valley startup with headquarters in London and a large workforce in Kyiv. Photographs broadcasted worldwide shows their bodies lying next to their suitcases and a dog carrier.

Anastasia Avetysian, a work colleague, told the New York Times that SE Ranking had provided emergency evacuation funds for its employees and Tatiana had been distributing them.

Avetisyan said: “We were all in touch with her, even when she was hiding in the basement, she was optimistic and joking in our group chat that the company would now need to do a special operation to get them out, like “Saving Private Ryan.”

During an interview with the New York Times, Serhiy said that he was in eastern Ukraine tending to his ailing mother when his family was killed. He broke down in tears talking about the senseless killings.

Serhiy said: “I told her, “Forgive me that I couldn’t defend you”, I tried to care for one person, and it meant I cannot protect you. Mykyta slept all day and stayed up all night, watching over his mother and sister. My son was under a lot of stress.”

He said that when attacks intensified, his wife decided to flee the area with her children and parents. On Saturday they attempted to leave town in their minivan, but were dissuaded by a tank rolling by on the street.

On Sunday morning they drove as far as they could, but were forced to evacuate their minivan and tried to cross the damaged bridge on foot. He had been trying to monitor his family’s location on a cellphone app. He knew something had gone wrong when the tracker showed the phone was at a Kyiv hospital, and no one was picking up his calls.

To return to Kyiv, Serhiy flew into Russia and crossed a land border into Poland, where Russian guards eventually let him pass after threatening to arrest him. He told them: “My whole family died in what you call a special operation and we call war. You can do what you want with me. I have nothing left to lose.”

Ksenia Khirvonina, spokeswoman for SE Ranking, told the San Francisco Chronicle from Dubai, that Tatiana “was a very friendly, brave, courageous woman with a great sense of humor, she always cheered everyone around her up, she was truly like a big sister to all of us.”

“The family’s apartment building was bombed the day before they died, forcing them into a basement without heat or food, and they finally decided to flee to Kyiv. But then Russian troops started firing on innocent civilians,” she added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promises that he would kill “every bastard” responsible for the indiscriminate civilian slaughter. Russia has denied targeting civilians, although airstrikes hit three hospitals in Ukraine on Wednesday.

President Zelenskyy said efforts were being made to evacuate some 18,000 people from embattled towns in the Kyiv region to the capital itself. He said about 35,000 civilians have used humanitarian corridors to flee the fighting.

 

 

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