Within the {photograph}, Anna Haidarzhy and her 4-month-old son, Tymofii, are barely seen underneath the bloodstained blanket. They lie within the rubble, on the toes of rescue employees in black and fluorescent uniforms. Simply two arms, one from the mom, 31, one from her son, could be seen protruding of the blanket.
“It seemed like they had been saying goodbye,” one of many rescuers, Serhii Mudrenko, stated of the picture.
Their our bodies had been discovered within the smoking ruins of an residence block hit in a Russian drone assault in March within the southern Ukrainian metropolis of Odesa that killed 12 folks. The {photograph}, taken by Ukraine’s state emergency providers, has circulated broadly in Ukraine — and has been held up as a tragic image of the horrible toll exacted on civilians by Russia’s battle.
All through the search, Serhii Haidarzhy, 32, Anna’s husband and Tymofii’s father, had stayed with the rescuers as they combed the particles. He had survived the strike with the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, Lizi, and was holding out for a miracle.
“I hoped that Anichka would survive underneath the rubble,” Mr. Haidarzhy stated, utilizing her nickname.
The Haidarzhys had been married for greater than three years. Family and friends stated they had been inseparable and acted like younger lovers. He usually introduced his spouse flowers, they stated. He listed her quantity as “My love” on his cellphone. And after they may, the couple went on dates to get pleasure from sunsets alongside a close-by estuary.
“We savored each second,” he stated. “We had been dwelling life to the fullest.”
However now, standing close to the destroyed constructing after hours of looking out following the assault on March 2, he was realizing that this a part of his life was over. Then a pal, who was additionally a rescuer, seemed up at him from the rubble and took off his helmet. “I knew instantly,” Mr. Haidarzhy stated.
His story is simply one of many tragedies many Ukrainians have skilled since Russia’s full-scale invasion started in February 2022. Russian assaults have killed hundreds of civilians, in response to the United Nations — shattering desires, devastating households, ending love tales.
An beginner photographer, he had extensively documented his household life on Instagram. The pictures now stand for what’s misplaced: journeys throughout Ukraine together with his spouse, household picnics on the Black Sea, watching Tymofii develop up.
He stated he now had “to endure this loss, this grief” that numerous different Ukrainians have grappled with, and the usually insufferable questions that include it: Why did the strike kill his spouse and never him? How can he make Lizi perceive that she’s going to by no means see her mom and brother once more?
“It’s very laborious,” he stated in an interview at his spouse’s household house within the port metropolis of Odesa, his eyes brimming with tears. “I nonetheless want a while to come back to my senses.”
Mr. Haidarzhy met Anna at a Baptist summer time camp in 2020 outdoors Odesa. She, the seventh baby of a pastor with 9 youngsters, had a “zest for all times” and a blinding smile, he recalled.
“It’s love at first sight. You catch a glimpse of her, and also you simply know she’s the one,” he stated. Because the camp drew to a detailed, he sat down together with her by a campfire and instructed her he favored her. “Subsequent factor you already know, we’re holding fingers, similar to that.”
Two weeks later, he proposed. Anna, a florist and decorator, designed the marriage ceremony ceremony, which befell in her father’s church in October 2020. They stated “I do” underneath an arch of dried flowers, purple roses and reeds she had picked herself. She had made her personal gown.
“She may make one thing stunning out of nothing,” stated Nadiia Sidak, considered one of her sisters, and considered one of many in Odesa who described her as heat, beneficiant and inventive.
Lizi, a cheerful lady with curly blonde hair, was born a yr after the couple married. She has lengthy struggled to go to sleep, her father stated, and sometimes asks him to remain by her aspect whereas she dozes off. Tymofii was born in October 2023.
By then, Russia’s battle was effectively underway and Odesa, comparatively unscathed in the beginning of the combating, was underneath near-daily assault. Moscow was concentrating on the town’s port in an try to chop off sea exports, a lifeline for the Ukrainian economic system.
The noise of Russia’s assault drones, which sound like flying garden mowers, has change into acquainted to most Odesa residents.
Nonetheless, the couple “tried to proceed dwelling the identical manner, having fun with life simply as we all the time had,” Mr. Haidarzhy stated. As the pinnacle of an organization that manufactures airbags, he often left for work early within the morning, however would attempt to return within the early afternoon to assist his spouse with the kids, usually with a bouquet in hand.
Every time potential, they would go away Lizi and Tymofii with their household in order that they might stroll collectively alongside an estuary close to their house in northern Odesa.
On March 2, at round 1 a.m., a drone flew over the estuary, entered their neighborhood and crashed into their constructing, in response to Lt. Col. Serhii Sudets, a member of the air protection models defending Odesa.
That evening, Lizi and her father had fallen asleep in her bed room. Her mom was sleeping within the couple’s bed room subsequent door, holding Tymofii. That bed room collapsed after the strike. However not Lizi’s.
“Out of nowhere, I hear this big explosion,” Mr. Haidarzhy recalled. He awakened and rushed to the opposite bed room. “I began shouting: ‘My love!’ However all I discovered was the door. Our bed room was gone.”
With the constructing in flames, he and Lizi fled what was left of the residence and climbed down onto the rubble. Rescuers arrived rapidly and started the search within the pitch-black evening, slicing and eradicating concrete slabs with chain saws and excavators.
The entire constructing’s 9 flooring had partly collapsed, crushing a few of its inhabitants. Mr. Haidarzhy recalled one injured lady whose “screaming was simply gut-wrenching.”
Residents who survived the assault stated they remembered seeing Mr. Haidarzhy pacing close to the rubble and calling his spouse’s telephone, hoping for a miracle. Hours handed, however there was no signal of her.
Then, at 5:56 p.m., he acquired a notification from his cellphone firm in regards to the quantity he had been desperately attempting to achieve: “My love,” it learn, “is again on-line.”
The rescuers had simply uncovered her telephone subsequent to her physique and Tymofii’s.
All of Mr. Haidarzhy’s consideration is now targeted on Lizi.
“Generally she asks the place her mother and Tymosha are, and we inform her that they’re in heaven with Jesus,” he stated, utilizing a nickname for Tymofii. “Thank God she doesn’t perceive, as a result of it might be traumatic for the kid.”
The deaths have stirred painful reminiscences for Anna’s household. In 1968, in the course of the Soviet Union’s repressive rule towards spiritual teams, her grandfather, a Baptist pastor, was jailed for 5 years after which despatched into exile in jap Siberia. Her mom spent a part of her childhood there.
Sitting round a desk strewn with pastries and sandwiches on a current afternoon, the household mirrored on three generations oppressed or killed by Moscow. Mykola Sidak, Anna’s father, stated the Kremlin was now attempting to reassert its rule over Ukraine, “in order that Russia can have every little thing from the usS.R. once more.”
The household’s story and grief have resonated broadly in Ukraine. On March 6, greater than 700 folks attended the funeral, which befell in the identical church the place the couple bought married. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was additionally anticipated to attend, the household stated, however needed to cancel after a Russian missile landed a couple of lots of meters from him throughout a go to to Odesa that day, killing 5 folks.
The sound of the missile explosion echoed by means of the funeral, startling the mourners.
Reflecting on his life throughout a separate memorial, Mr. Haidarzhy stated, “Every part occurred rapidly for us.”
“I couldn’t imagine I bought married, had such a beautiful spouse. Everyone requested me, ‘Are you able to imagine it?’ I stated ‘No.’ Then I couldn’t imagine we had a baby,” he stated, referring to Tymofii. “And now, I can’t imagine they’re now not with us.”
Daria Mitiuk contributed reporting.
