Man returns after family killed near Kyiv, says his "beloved wife is lying in a black bag on the floor" of a morgue
A man whose wife and two children were killed by mortar fire in Ukraine as they tried to flee was in Kyiv on Wednesday to bury them but he said their funerals must be postponed because the morgues are full of civilians.
Serhiy Perebyinis wasn't with his family when they died Monday in a civilian refugee corridor while trying to flee the suburb of Irpin for the capital. The California company that Tatiana Perebyinis, 43, worked for helped her husband return to Kyiv.
"Trying to hold on but it's really hard," Perebyinis posted on Facebook. "Fourth day on my feet, thousands of kilometers of road."
Tatiana Perebyinis' 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 an image of himself holding photographs of his wife and children.
Tatiana Perebyinis was chief accountant for SE Ranking, a Silicon Valley startup with headquarters in London and a large workforce in Kyiv. Also killed were her daughter, Alisa, 9, and son, Mykyta 18.
"There are no words to describe our grief or to mend our pain," the company said in a Facebook post. "But for us, it is crucial to not let Tania and her kids Alisa and Mykyta remain just statistics. Her family became the victim of the unprovoked fire on civilians, which under any law is a crime against humanity."
The company said many Ukrainians are part of its team.
"We don't just read about the Russian invasion in the news, we witness it daily," it said. "And we know for sure-the nature of the Russian army's actions is criminal and inhuman. We condemn any attempt to justify it."
Photographs broadcast worldwide showed their bodies lying next to their suitcases and a dog carrier.
"I met with correspondents, witnesses of these events. They handed me some of the personal items that were left lying on the street near the bodies," Perebyinis wrote.
Russia has denied targeting civilians, although airstrikes hit three hospitals in Ukraine on Wednesday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky 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.
A work colleague, Anastasia Avetysian, told the New York Times that SE Ranking had provided emergency evacuation funds for its employees and Tatiana Perebyinis had been distributing them.
"We were all in touch with her," Avetysian said. "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.'"
Tatiana Perebyinis "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," Ksenia Khirvonina, spokeswoman for SE Ranking, told the San Francisco Chronicle from Dubai, where she fled on Feb. 23 from Ukraine.
"She always had answers to all our questions, even the most stupid ones, about personal finances or taxes or how to upgrade your visa cards; she had answers to everything," Khirvonina said.
Tatiana Perebyinis stayed in Irpin, where she was living, when the Russian invasion started because her mother was sick and her 18-year-old son was required to remain in the country in case he was needed to defend it, Khirvonina said.
He had started university this year.
"She always talked about him, how smart he was," Khirvonina said. "She was a great mother; giving her kids everything she could."
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, Khirvonina said.
"But then Russian troops started firing on innocent civilians," she said.