Stories of Injustice Day 2023

Twenty-year-old Yevhenia Babakova lived in Mariupol. On March 9 2022, she and her mother went shopping to the Central Market. But they didn't get there. The city was hit by a Russian air raid, Yevhenia suffered numerous shrapnel wounds and died.

Yevhenia worked as a pharmacist in Mariupol, studied remotely at Kherson State University. She was a graduate of the Beryslav Medical College. She wanted to open her own pharmacy and massage parlor. She followed trends on TikTok and also made her own videos. She enjoyed bead embroidery, working with paper and creating with plasticine.

“Yevhenia was the only one in our family who categorically refused the widespread home self-treatment and relied on the experience of doctors. She knew very well what a neglected disease can cause. At the first sign of difficulties, she always rushed us to the doctor's. She was quiet, calm, a little introverted, but always willing to help. She wasn't afraid to speak her mind. She had beautiful brown eyes and a charming look, she danced beautifully," describes her sister Julia.

Above all, Yevhenia loved her family and most of all her little nephew. "She was supposed to become his godmother, instead she became our angel and protector," said sister Julia. Julia learned about the shelling of the city on March 9, 2022 via Telegram network. There she also saw her sister in one of the photographs. She believed she was alive. "Then I saw Yevhenia again in one of the videos. She was lying on the ground, the pressure wave threw her body near the epicenter of the explosion. She had fragments of a grenade stuck in her back, head and leg. Mom was nowhere to be found," she described.

Her father, younger brother, older sister, nephew and boyfriend, to whom she was planning to get married - all of them have now been remembering Yevhenia for more than a year...

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On July 14, 2022, Oleksandra Borivska became one of the victims of the Russian rocket attack on the city of Vinnytsia. She died on the street near the House of Officers on her way to the driving school. Oleksandra was eighteen years old and was in the second year of the Vasyl' Stus Donetsk National University, which, due to the war conflict in the east of the country, moved to Vinnytsia in the west-central Ukraine. Oleksandra is remembered in her alma mater: "She was optimistic, smiling and proactive."

Her mother, Alla Chernakhivska, says that her daughter was extremely active and purposeful. The year before last, she helped with the preparation of the graduation evening, which she eventually moderated. Her hobby was photography, her photos were admired on social networks. She also liked to travel," says Oleksandra's mother.

Oleksandra planned a career in diplomacy, so she learned foreign languages. She dreamed of getting married on a sea or ocean shore. She wanted to travel a lot and see the Grand Canyon in the United States at least once. She loved animals, always carrying treats for stray dogs and cats in her pockets. "She was our only child," describes the mother of the victim of Russia's war against Ukraine.

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Twenty-year-old Iryna Dashko died on March 8, 2022 during the Russian bombing of the town of Piskivka in the Kyiv Oblast. She was born and raised in the town of Bila Krynytsia in the Zhytomyr Oblast. She studied agronomy at the local branch of the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine in the town of Nemishaieve near Kyiv. Everyne who knew her says she was friendly and cheerful. She dreamed of having a family, she planned to get married right after graduation. She was an avid fisherman and a great cook. "Iryna was a sensitive and a very kind girl, always willing to offer a helping hand," her mother, Natalia Kulak, remembers her daughter. The mother and Iryna's two sisters now mourn Iryna.

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Seventeen-year-old Lidia Duminika lost her life on March 24, 2022 in the village of Yavkyne in the Mykolaiv Oblast. On that day, together with her boyfriend Vyacheslav, she found herself under fire from Russian Smerch missiles. Shrapnels caused her fatal injuries. Two other people were killed, ten were injured.

Lidia Duminika came from the village of Chervona Dolyna in the Mykolaiv Oblast, where she also attended the local elementary school. In Mykolaiv, she specialized in processing procedures at the vocational school of economics and food technology. Her boyfriend Vyacheslav says that Lidia was constantly improving her culinary skills: she cooked a variety of dishes, inventing new recipes. “She dreamed of opening her own business where people would line up for her goodies. And it wasn't just a dream, we already planned and well thought everything together," Vyacheslav recounts.

He can't forget his girlfriend. “She was so gentle and empathetic, she was a great listener, I loved her kindness and simplicity... I still live in the village where it all happened. I seem to relive that day over and over again. I wake up in the morning and ask myself, “Why did this happen? Why were we in that place? And why exactly at that fateful second?" says Vyacheslav.

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Eighteen-year-old Hennadiy Havrashenko tragically died on September 13, 2022 in the city of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv Oblast. On that day, he was driving the car in which he, his mother and a younger brother went to see their grandmother. The car came under Russian fire, Hennadiy died on the spot, the mother and brother ended up in the hospital with injuries.

Hennadiy was born in the village of Vilshana in the Kharkiv Oblast. He attended a local school, where in the ninth grade, under the guidance of his teacher Valentyn Lazorenko, he worked on the project “Conversion of a children's car into an electric car”. With the project, he participated in the all-Ukrainian scientific research competition of students and members of the Minor Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

He followed up with studies at the Secondary School of Automotive Engineering of Kupiansk. In the fateful year of 2022 Hennadiy was already in the fourth year. Cars were his life, he was interested in everything connected to cars and transport. He had big ambitions and bold plans. He dreamed of becoming a truck driver. He loved Ukraine, his family and loved ones.


"I'm proud of my son and I can't make peace with the fact that he's not here anymore. I will never forgive those who killed him. He was everything to us..." said the boy's father, Andriy Havrashenko. Along with him, Hennadiy is mourned by his mother, older sister and two younger brothers.

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Fifteen-year-old Ivan Ivanov was killed by Russian occupiers on the morning of March 4, 2022, near the village of Blystavytsia in the Kyiv Oblast. The boy's family was trying to escape from the occupied native village and cross to the neighboring village of Myrotske. But the car in which Ivan evacuated came under Russian fire.

Ivanov's neighbor Tamara recalls how she and the boy's mother Iryna tried to pick up Ivan's body: "We came to the car, Iryna fell to her knees and took her son by the hand, but he was dead. She pulled his backpack out from under the wheels of the car, his things were scattered everywhere – 9th grade textbooks, tennis shoes... She started to collect them and put them in the backpack. I ask her: Iryna, why are you doing this? In shock, she shouted at me: These are Ivan's things, I have to collect them..."

Tamara knew Ivan since he was a child. He was kind, and he and his beloved younger sister formed an inseparable duo. He loved to put his hand to work at home.

They took Ivan's body out of the damaged car and took it home in a wheelbarrow, to bury it in the yard. After the liberation of the village and the expulsion of the Russians from the north of the country, Ivan was buried at the cemetery in Bucha.

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Eighteen-year-old Valentyn Yakymchuk died on March 14, 2022 in the village of Mokhnatyn in the Chernihiv region. Two of his friends, seventeen-year-old twin brothers Yevhen and Bohdan Samodii, also died with him. The trio was returning home from a visit and met a Russian military convoy in Mokhnatyn. The soldiers shot Valentyn's friends with machine guns, and the Russians opened fire on him from a combat vehicle, the cannon which is normally used to attack armored targets. The boy's leg and half of his head were torn off by a bullet...

Valentyn Yakymchuk was a first-year student of the field of tourism at the Chernihiv National Technical University. He loved computer games and football, he liked watching movies.

"My brother was a great guy, he had style and a unique sense of humor. He liked to spend time with his friends, he never hesitated to help me. In the summer, he wanted to start working for the first time, he planned to get a driver's license," wrote Valentyn's sister Alyona Yakymchuk.

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Viacheslav Yalyshev was fourteen years old. He died on May 2, 2022 in Odesa. On the fateful day, the boy wanted to warn his elderly neighbors about the air raid warning. He was hiding with his grandparents in the basement of a hostel near the airport when the sirens went off. Meanwhile, their neighbors left the shelter to cook at home. They are old people and did not register the warning. Viacheslav therefore wanted to tell them about the danger and ran out of the cellar. The Russian army subsequently launched a missile attack on Odesa. One of the rockets hit the dormitory. The neighbors survived, the boy did not.

Fourteen-year-old Viacheslav Yalyshev was a good student, it was a nice and cheerful boy who liked to dance and make videos with his friends. He had acting talent and dreamed of becoming an actor in the future.

“He will forever be our angel and hero. He saved others' lives and died himself," said Viacheslav's mother Olha Yalysheva.

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Twenty-year-old Tetyana Kotlubey died tragically along with her mother and grandmother on March 11, 2022, when a Russian missile hit their house.

Tetyana was born in Mariupol, studied computer science and foreign languages at the local technical university. She wanted to continue her studies at one of the universities abroad. She liked to travel, she was happily in love. She loved to watch the Eurovision Song Contest.

She was very afraid of war. After the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, she deleted all her social media profiles and photos. She wanted to escape from the besieged Mariupol. She didn't make it.

“My daughter loved life, enjoyed every second of it. She was terribly afraid of war. As if she suspected something..." father Yevhen Kotlubey admitted.

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Seventeen-year-old Anna Kushnerenko died during the evacuation

on March 9, 2022 near Chernihiv. Her friend Vitalii Skorobahatko was with her on this fateful day. As he later testified, they crossed the bridge over the river Desna and continued to the village of Anysiv together with about forty other people. Anna was injured during a sudden Russian shelling.

“I was trying to help. First she cried out in pain, then just breathed very heavily. When we moved her to one of the houses she was still alive. The shrapnel hit her in the stomach, the wound was deep, and no one knew what to do with such an extensive injury, so we waited for the ambulance to arrive. A local doctor came in running, then the ambulance arrived as well. All the injured were taken to the hospital, but Anna could no longer be helped, she died,” Vitalii said.

Anna lived in the city of Mena. She studied at the Levko Revutsky Music School in Chernihiv, she played the Ukrainian national instrument bandura. Her mother, Olena Kushnerenko, explained that her daughter dreamed of participating in a music competition and believed in herself a lot. "Since she was little, we talked a lot with her at home. When she had a wish or wanted something, we always discussed it and set priorities. I tried to give her everything, even though we weren't really rich. Sometimes we had to borrow money for something or deny ourselves a lot, but good people came together and we were able to buy her the bandura," described Olena Kushnerenko. Anna was her only daughter.

"After endless days and sleepless nights in inhumane conditions in the besieged and bombed Chernihiv, she tried to return home to her parents... Sweet Anna… Such a talented musician who could make the bandura sound heavenly. And how she sang! She was a source of light and joy." They gave their last goodbye to Anna Kushnerenko at the town hall of her native Mena.

"The world stopped for me... We are just simple people, and Anna was so extraordinary, a special child... Gifted with incredible talent. But God gives, God takes away..." said Anna Kushnerenko's mother.

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Nineteen-year-old Ivanna Obodzinska became a tragic victim of the war on March 8, 2022, when two Russian air bombs hit her house in the village of Yurivka in the Zhytomyr Oblast. Along with her died her one-year-old twins, her brother Volodymyr and her mother Natalia.

Ivanna graduated from the Malyn Forest Technical College, specializing in ecological constructions. She continued her studies at the Zhytomyr National Agroecological University. She took care of two children – Denys and Nikol. She dreamed of becoming a landscape architect in the field of green construction. As a child she liked to attend art classes, she had an artistic talent.

"We had an unsightly plot in front of the house. Ivanna planted it all with flowers and every spring she carefully dug up everything and planted new plants. They loved to bake with Mom, and my son and I enjoyed it a lot," recalls the girl's father Volodymyr Obodzinsky, who, all at once, lost his wife, children and grandchildren.

On the tragic day he was working in the capital city. He will never forget the last conversation he had with his daughter, she begged him on the phone: "Daddy, come home." On November 9, 2022, Ivanna would have celebrated her twentieth birthday, she would have gotten the gift of a holiday in Turkey. But her life and dreams were destroyed forever by Russian bombs...

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Eighteen-year-old Mykyta Perebyinis died on March 6, 2022, during evacuation from the shelled town of Irpin. Fleeing people came under mortar fire from the Russian army in the village of Romanivka and Mykyta suffered multiple shrapnel wounds on his body and head. His mother and younger sister died along with him.




It was the second time Mykyta ran away from the Russian army. He came from the Donetsk Oblast that his family left in 2014, when the armed conflict broke out there. He studied software engineering at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. The university would have been his gateway to the world, he wanted to live, have an interesting job, travel a lot. He was goal-oriented and always positive.

"Mines were exploding everywhere, Mykyta and his mother and sister tried in vain to hide from the explosions under the bridge over the Irpin river. The medical examiner's report subsequently confirmed that even in the worst moments, Mykyta tried to protect his younger sister Alisa: most of the shrapnel ended up in his body as he was trying to cover his sister," Kyiv National University Taras Shevchenko reported.

“There are so many things I didn't get to teach you, and there are so many things I passed on to you… You will never come to your father for advice again. I didn't want to break into your inner world, so I waited. I was waiting for you to find out that my advice and life experiences can be valuable to you. We managed to talk a lot, but the most important thing will forever remain unsaid," says Mykyta's father, Serhii Perebyinis.

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Nineteen-year-old Danylo Prokopenko died of his wounds after being hit in the head by shrapnel on May 4, 2022. On that day, heavy weapons of Russian troops attacked the direction of Izyum in the Kharkiv Oblast. A native of Izyum, Danylo was a student at the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute of the National Technical University, where he was preparing to become an expert in the field of computer and information technology. He liked to ride his bike, he dreamed of working in the IT field, his hobby was traveling and exploring new places.

On the fateful day, Danylo went to his friend Artem to plan an evacuation from the shelled city. He did not find him at home, so he decided to wait for him. In a few minutes a Russian shell hit the house... "Danylo was a great and kind-hearted boy, he had a lot of friends. He readily helped everyone. He will forever remain in our hearts," says Danyl's father, Ruslan Prokopenko.

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Seventeen-year-old Daniil Shmahlii was killed on February 25, 2022, during Russian shelling of the bridge over the Irpi River in Hostomel. As the young man's mother testified later, Daniil wanted to save himself by jumping into the water. It took a few weeks to find his body. He was buried on April 20, 2022. Daniil loved life. He studied conscientiously and hard, participated in a number of school competitions and regularly won. He played a lot of sports: he was a boxer, went to the gym, he loved skating and inline skating. He attended a circle of Ukrainian folk dances, he loved singing. He and his stepfather often played chess. He had a girlfriend he loved, Iryna…

"The last time we saw each other was February 22. We talked for a long time, joked, laughed. He never forgot to ask how we were, if we needed money or help with anything. Daniil was very frugal, and he wanted us to have our own place. He also cared deeply about his younger sister Darynka, and wanted her to have her own room," recalls the boy's mother, Iryna.

Born on Doctor's Day, Daniil dreamed of becoming a surgeon and wanted to save people's lives. He studied in the first year of the Bogomolets National Medical University. His classmates remember him as a kind and sensitive person with a refined sense of humor. They never forget to point out that he was extremely smart.‪


"Dan was always excellently prepared for anatomy, Latin, biology and history classes. Sometimes I had the impression that he knew almost everything. He often explained anatomy to us. We made fun of him that he would make a great teacher," says one of Daniil's classmates. She recalls how Daniil once asked his classmates if they thought there would ever be a war in Ukraine: "I remember that moment very clearly. Most of us just laughed and said there would be no war. Even Dan eventually believed so..."

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Twenty-one-year-old Polina Zheldak died on March 3, 2022, during a Russian airstrike on Chernihiv. Her father Mykhailo, brother Hlib, fiancé Yevhen Kovalenko and grandmother Halyna Pecherna also died in the rubble of the family home.

Polina was born in Chernihiv and also lived in this city north of Kyiv near the Belarusian and Russian borders. She studied at the Nizhyn Pedagogical University, a hundred kilometers away, she wanted to become an English teacher, she worked as a lecturer. She was a creative girl: she played the guitar, wrote poetry, sang, painted pictures by numbers. She loved interior design. She liked to prepare surprises for her loved ones. Together with her fiancé Yevhen, they planned to organize language courses in Nizhyn.

"Polina was very intelligent and educated. She loved her work, she wanted to travel, marry Yevhyn and start a family, start a business... I miss her terribly," says her mother, Svitlana Zheldak.

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