Mother shown dead on the street alongside her children in horror Ukraine photo was a Silicon Valley worker
Josh Marcus
Thu., March 10, 2022
Over the weekend, images of a family of Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian shelling outside of Kyiv inspired worldwide outrage, including from Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, who vowed to find and punish “every b*****d” responsible.
“They were just trying to get out of town. To escape. The whole family,” Mr Zelensky said in a video address. “How many such families have died in Ukraine?”
The family in the photo, which ran with top billing in places like The New York Times, has now been identified and linked to a tech company partially based in the US.
Tatiana Perebeinis, 43, along with her daughter Alise, 9, and son Nikita, 18, were all killed shortly after they crossed a partially destroyed bridge over the Irpin River and were hit by a Russian mortar.
“We are so shocked, saddened, devastated, angry. There are no words to describe our emotions, we are so heartbroken,” Ksenia Khirvonina, a colleague of Perebeinis at the Palo Alto, California-based SEO firm SE Ranking, told The San Francisco Chronicle, adding, “they prove that (the) Russian army and Putin himself are monsters who deserve no mercy for their doings.”
Over half of the company’s employees, including its CEO, live in Ukraine.
When the invasion began, Perebeinis stayed in the country to look after her sick mother, as well as her son, who was old enough that he was required to remain in Ukraine in case he was called up by its defence forces.
“She always talked about him, how smart he was,” Ms Khirvonina added in the paper. “She was a great mother; giving her kids everything she could.”
Tatiana Perebeinis was described as ‘bright, witty, determined’ by colleagues at IT company SE Ranking where she worked as chief accountant (SE Ranking)
After hiding out in a basement when a bomb hit their apartment building, the family decided to flee because they thought they had been offered safe passage by a temporary Russian ceasefire.
Over the weekend, Russia said it would offer temporary cease fires to allow for humanitarian evacuations from major combat zones, but Ukrainian officials say they haven’t been honouring these commitments, which Russia denies.
“The Russian side is not holding to the ceasefire,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, has said.
In addition to attacking Ukraine’s military, Russia has also targeted highly sensitive civilian zones, including densely populated cities, power plants, and children’s and maternity hospitals. The International Criminal Court has launched a war crimes investigation in Ukraine, and UK leaders have called for Vladimir Putin to be held before a Nuremberg-style war crimes tribunal.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said its necessary because of Mr Putin’s “crime of aggression” against Ukraine.
Josh Marcus
Thu., March 10, 2022
Over the weekend, images of a family of Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian shelling outside of Kyiv inspired worldwide outrage, including from Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, who vowed to find and punish “every b*****d” responsible.
“They were just trying to get out of town. To escape. The whole family,” Mr Zelensky said in a video address. “How many such families have died in Ukraine?”
The family in the photo, which ran with top billing in places like The New York Times, has now been identified and linked to a tech company partially based in the US.
Tatiana Perebeinis, 43, along with her daughter Alise, 9, and son Nikita, 18, were all killed shortly after they crossed a partially destroyed bridge over the Irpin River and were hit by a Russian mortar.
“We are so shocked, saddened, devastated, angry. There are no words to describe our emotions, we are so heartbroken,” Ksenia Khirvonina, a colleague of Perebeinis at the Palo Alto, California-based SEO firm SE Ranking, told The San Francisco Chronicle, adding, “they prove that (the) Russian army and Putin himself are monsters who deserve no mercy for their doings.”
Over half of the company’s employees, including its CEO, live in Ukraine.
When the invasion began, Perebeinis stayed in the country to look after her sick mother, as well as her son, who was old enough that he was required to remain in Ukraine in case he was called up by its defence forces.
“She always talked about him, how smart he was,” Ms Khirvonina added in the paper. “She was a great mother; giving her kids everything she could.”
Tatiana Perebeinis was described as ‘bright, witty, determined’ by colleagues at IT company SE Ranking where she worked as chief accountant (SE Ranking)
After hiding out in a basement when a bomb hit their apartment building, the family decided to flee because they thought they had been offered safe passage by a temporary Russian ceasefire.
Over the weekend, Russia said it would offer temporary cease fires to allow for humanitarian evacuations from major combat zones, but Ukrainian officials say they haven’t been honouring these commitments, which Russia denies.
“The Russian side is not holding to the ceasefire,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, has said.
In addition to attacking Ukraine’s military, Russia has also targeted highly sensitive civilian zones, including densely populated cities, power plants, and children’s and maternity hospitals. The International Criminal Court has launched a war crimes investigation in Ukraine, and UK leaders have called for Vladimir Putin to be held before a Nuremberg-style war crimes tribunal.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said its necessary because of Mr Putin’s “crime of aggression” against Ukraine.
Man returns to Ukraine after family slain while fleeing
Wed., March 9, 2022,
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — 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.
Sergii Perebeinis wasn't with the 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 Perebeinis, 43, worked for helped her husband return to Kyiv.
“Trying to hold on but it’s really hard," Perebeinis posted on Facebook. “Fourth day on my feet, thousands of kilometers of road."
Tatiana Perebeinis's 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 Perebeinis 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, Alise, 9, and son, Nikita, 18.
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,” Perebeinis wrote.
Russia has denied targeting civilians, although airstrikes hit three hospitals in Ukraine on Wednesday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr 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.
A work colleague, Anastasia Avetysian, told the New York Times that SE Ranking had provided emergency evacuation funds for its employees and Tatiana Perebeinis 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 Perebeinis “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 Perebeinis 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.
The Associated Press
Wed., March 9, 2022,
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — 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.
Sergii Perebeinis wasn't with the 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 Perebeinis, 43, worked for helped her husband return to Kyiv.
“Trying to hold on but it’s really hard," Perebeinis posted on Facebook. “Fourth day on my feet, thousands of kilometers of road."
Tatiana Perebeinis's 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 Perebeinis 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, Alise, 9, and son, Nikita, 18.
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,” Perebeinis wrote.
Russia has denied targeting civilians, although airstrikes hit three hospitals in Ukraine on Wednesday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr 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.
A work colleague, Anastasia Avetysian, told the New York Times that SE Ranking had provided emergency evacuation funds for its employees and Tatiana Perebeinis 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 Perebeinis “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 Perebeinis 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.
The Associated Press
Lauren Frias
Tue, March 8, 2022
The photojournalist who took a devastating photo of a dead family in Ukraine said she witnessed a war crime.
Lynsey Addario's photo ran on the NYT front page on Monday, capturing the grisly reality of Ukraine.
"I thought it's disrespectful to take a photo, but I have to take a photo," she said. "This is a war crime."
The photojournalist who witnessed a mother and children being killed by a mortar in northern Ukraine called the incident a "war crime," CBS News reported Tuesday.
Pulitzer-Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario took the horrifying photo of the family lying dead in Irpin, a city about 30 miles northwest of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. The photo ran on the front page of The New York Times on Monday.
In an interview with "CBS Evening News" host Norah O'Donnell, Addario described the scene leading up to the shocking image that painted the reality of the Russian attack on Ukraine.
"I went forward and found a place sort of behind a wall and started photographing," Addario told O'Donnell. "And in fact, within minutes, a series of mortars fell increasingly closer and closer to our position until one landed about 30 feet from where I was standing and it killed a mother and her two children."
In the moment, she said she was "shaken up" because she had been sprayed with gravel from the mortar round "that could have killed us very easily." Nonetheless, she said she tried to "stay very focused" and keep "the camera to my eye."
As Addario was running to safety following the blast, she saw the family that was killed and thought of her own children.
"When we were told that we could run across the street by our security adviser, I ran, and I saw this family splayed out and I saw these little moon boots and puffy coat, and I just thought of my own children," she said.
The photographer said she acknowledged that it could be disrespectful to take a photo of the family, but she felt she was obligated to document the moment, given that she was in a civilian area at the time and believed that the attack was intentional.
"I thought it's disrespectful to take a photo, but I have to take a photo," she said. "This is a war crime."
"I think it's really important that people around the world see these images," she added. "It's really brave of The New York Times to put that image on the front page. It's a difficult image, but it is a historically important image."
