Kyiv buries soldier's wife and daughters killed in Russian attack

Pallade Veneta - Kyiv buries soldier's wife and daughters killed in Russian attack

Kyiv buries soldier's wife and daughters killed in Russian attack / Photo: Roman PILIPEY - AFP

Men in military uniform shouldered the three white coffins out of a schoolyard in Kyiv on Tuesday, carrying a Ukrainian mother and her two children killed by the Russians to be buried.

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Residents held each other and wept as they bid a final farewell to their neighbours, who died at dawn on Friday, when a barrage of Russian drones and missiles pounded the Ukrainian capital for hours.

Across a leafy park next to the school, flowers, toys, and portraits of those killed were laid beneath the remains of a nine-storey residential building gutted in the attack, which killed at least 31 people.

"It is difficult to imagine the grief of our brother, who lost two little daughters and his beloved wife in an instant," said the military unit of Igor Gumeniuk, the serviceman whose family was buried.

Local media reported that Irina and her children Anastassia, 13, and Alina, 10, had fled the fighting in the eastern Donetsk region -- where Russia has concentrated its firepower -- before settling in Kyiv.

"Alina and Nastya were sincere, kind and bright girls. We will remember their smiles, their kind hearts, their desire to live and learn," the girls' school that held the ceremony wrote on Facebook.

One of Irina's final social media posts from last month showed the family meeting in eastern Ukraine with Igor, an active serviceman.

"We were happy together all day for the first time in eight months," she wrote on Facebook, alongside pictures of the family relaxing by a river.

Russia has stepped up its long-range drone and missile attacks on Ukraine over recent months as US-led efforts to end the more than three-year invasion appear to stall.

Thirty-nine-year-old doctor Roman Moskalenko, whose body was found beneath the rubble in Kyiv, also received a farewell from his fellow medics.

"His colleagues remember him as attentive, caring, and professional," Kyiv's Vechirniy media outlet reported.

A day earlier, six-year-old boy Matviy Marchenko was buried outside the capital in his father's native village, according to local media.

R.Zaccone--PV

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