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 ft of rescue employees in black and fluorescent uniforms. Simply two arms, one from the mom, 31, one from her son, might be seen protruding of the blanket.
“It appeared like they had been saying goodbye,” one of many rescuers, Serhii Mudrenko, mentioned of the picture.
Their our bodies had been discovered within the smoking ruins of an house 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 conflict.
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 mentioned, utilizing her nickname.
The Haidarzhys had been married for greater than three years. Family and friends mentioned they had been inseparable and acted like younger lovers. He typically introduced his spouse flowers, they mentioned. He listed her quantity as “My love” on his cellphone. And after they might, the couple went on dates to take pleasure in sunsets alongside a close-by estuary.
“We savored each second,” he mentioned. “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 buddy, who was additionally a rescuer, appeared up at him from the rubble and took off his helmet. “I knew instantly,” Mr. Haidarzhy mentioned.
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 1000’s of civilians, in response to the United Nations — shattering goals, devastating households, ending love tales.
An beginner photographer, he had extensively documented his household life on Instagram. The photographs now stand for what’s misplaced: journeys throughout Ukraine together with his spouse, household picnics on the Black Sea, watching Tymofii develop up.
He mentioned he now had “to endure this loss, this grief” that numerous different Ukrainians have grappled with, and the customarily insufferable questions that include it: Why did the strike kill his spouse and never him? How can he make Lizi perceive that she is going to by no means see her mom and brother once more?
“It’s very onerous,” he mentioned in an interview at his spouse’s household dwelling within the port metropolis of Odesa, his eyes brimming with tears. “I nonetheless want a while to return to my senses.”
Mr. Haidarzhy met Anna at a Baptist summer season camp in 2020 exterior Odesa. She, the seventh baby of a pastor with 9 youngsters, had a “zest for all times” and a stunning 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 mentioned. Because the camp drew to a detailed, he sat down together with her by a campfire and informed her he favored her. “Subsequent factor you recognize, we’re holding palms, similar to that.”
Two weeks later, he proposed. Anna, a florist and decorator, designed the marriage ceremony, which happened in her father’s church in October 2020. They mentioned “I do” underneath an arch of dried flowers, crimson roses and reeds she had picked herself. She had made her personal gown.
“She might make one thing stunning out of nothing,” mentioned Nadiia Sidak, one among her sisters, and one among 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 mentioned, and infrequently asks him to remain by her aspect whereas she dozes off. Tymofii was born in October 2023.
By then, Russia’s conflict was nicely underway and Odesa, comparatively unscathed at first of the combating, was underneath near-daily assault. Moscow was focusing on the town’s port in an try to chop off sea exports, a lifeline for the Ukrainian financial system.
The noise of Russia’s assault drones, which sound like flying garden mowers, has turn out to be acquainted to most Odesa residents.
Nonetheless, the couple “tried to proceed dwelling the identical means, having fun with life simply as we at all times had,” Mr. Haidarzhy mentioned. As the pinnacle of an organization that manufactures airbags, he normally left for work early within the morning, however would attempt to return within the early afternoon to assist his spouse with the youngsters, typically with a bouquet in hand.
At any time when potential, they would depart Lizi and Tymofii with their household in order that they might stroll collectively alongside an estuary close to their dwelling 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 items 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 enormous explosion,” Mr. Haidarzhy recalled. He wakened 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 house and climbed down onto the rubble. Rescuers arrived shortly and commenced 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 girl whose “screaming was simply gut-wrenching.”
Residents who survived the assault mentioned they remembered seeing Mr. Haidarzhy pacing close to the rubble and calling his spouse’s cellphone, 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 concerning the quantity he had been desperately attempting to achieve: “My love,” it learn, “is again on-line.”
The rescuers had simply uncovered her cellphone subsequent to her physique and Tymofii’s.
All of Mr. Haidarzhy’s consideration is now centered on Lizi.
“Generally she asks the place her mother and Tymosha are, and we inform her that they’re in heaven with Jesus,” he mentioned, utilizing a nickname for Tymofii. “Thank God she doesn’t perceive, as a result of it could be traumatic for the kid.”
The deaths have stirred painful reminiscences for Anna’s household. In 1968, through 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 japanese Siberia. Her mom spent a part of her childhood there.
Sitting round a desk strewn with pastries and sandwiches on a latest afternoon, the household mirrored on three generations oppressed or killed by Moscow. Mykola Sidak, Anna’s father, mentioned the Kremlin was now attempting to reassert its rule over Ukraine, “in order that Russia can have all the pieces from the united statesS.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 happened in the identical church the place the couple acquired married. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was additionally anticipated to attend, the household mentioned, however needed to cancel after a Russian missile landed just a few tons of meters from him throughout a go to to Odesa that day, killing 5 folks.
The sound of the missile explosion echoed by way of the funeral, startling the mourners.
Reflecting on his life throughout a separate memorial, Mr. Haidarzhy mentioned, “Every part occurred shortly for us.”
“I couldn’t consider I acquired married, had such a beautiful spouse. All people requested me, ‘Are you able to consider it?’ I mentioned ‘No.’ Then I couldn’t consider we had a baby,” he mentioned, referring to Tymofii. “And now, I can’t consider they’re not with us.”
Daria Mitiuk contributed reporting.
