Ukrainian parents weep over coffins of twin daughters after air strike

Grief-stricken Ukrainian parents weep beside two coffins carrying their 14-year-old twin daughters days after they were both killed in Russian air strike on pizzeria

• 14-year-old twins Yuliya and Anna Aksenchenko were among 12 people killed
• Russia fired several unguided surface-to-air missiles at the city of Kramatorsk 

Heart-breaking images have emerged from the funerals of 14-year-old twin sisters killed earlier this week in an indiscriminate Russian missile strike on a pizzeria in Kramatorsk, Ukraine.

Yuliya and Anna Aksenchenko were among the 12 people killed after Vladimir Putin’s missiles pounded the RIA Pizzeria on Tuesday evening. They had been in the vicinity of the restaurant during the attack.

This morning, the family held a mourning ceremony for them at their apartment several hundred metres away from the site.

Their mother was seen weeping as she sat by the graves of her two daughters.

The girls lay in coffins with open caskets, but were covered with a white and gold sheet.

Heart-breaking images have emerged from the funerals of 14-year-old twin sisters killed earlier this week. Their parents can be seen weeping while placing their hands on the girls’ open coffins

Yuliya and Anna Aksenchenko, both 14, were among the 12 people killed on Tuesday

Putin’s missiles pounded the RIA Pizzeria on Tuesday evening, in an indiscriminate strike

Mourners said they had been dressed in wedding dresses for their burial, a custom in Ukraine for girls who die before they have a chance to be married.

None of the family members were in any condition to speak to reporters, the twins’ godfather said.

Initially unable to find two wedding dresses in a city not far from the front and where wedding parlours are closed, friends and family issued an online appeal for well-wishers to donate two dresses so that the girls could be buried.

‘This is a tradition. If girls become angels, go up to heaven before getting married, they are dressed in wedding dresses so they can find their other half there,’ said Viktoria Kushka, 50, a teacher who taught Anna and Yuliia in first grade.

The blast at the pizzeria also wounded at least 56 at the eatery, popular with both soldiers and journalists in the town of Kramatorsk, one of the largest still under Ukrainian control in the east of the country, where fighting is most fierce.

Ukrainian police said Russia fired two S-300 surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles at the city. The weapons are not precision strike missiles, and can damage large areas.

A second missile hit a village on the fringes of Kramatorsk, injuring five, but the main casualties were at the restaurant. Among the injured was an infant born last year.

‘The bodies of three people, including a minor born in 2008, have been recovered from the rubble,’ the interior ministry said on Telegram. 

‘Rescuers are working through the rubble of the destroyed building and searching for people who are probably still under it,’ emergency services said. 

Oleh and Olha Aksenchenko are pictured mourning the tragic death of their two 14-year-old daughters

Pictured are the girls’ family members mourning their tragic deaths

Pictured is a makeshift memorial placed by the pizzeria where 12 people were killed

At least eight people were killed, including three children, after Vladimir Putin’s missiles pounded a crowded Ukrainian restaurant overnight. Pictured: A crying woman is held by a man at the site of the restaurant destroyed in the Russian missile strike

A Russian missile also hit a cluster of buildings in Kremenchuk, about 230 miles west in central Ukraine, exactly a year after an attack on a shopping mall there that killed at least 20. No casualties were reported in the latest attack.

Russia has repeatedly denied its forces are targeting civilian sites in its so-called ‘special military operation’ despite overwhelming evidence on the contrary. 

Hundreds of civilians have been killed in strikes, and schools, hospitals and stations have all been attacked during the Kremlin’s disastrous 16-month invasion.

The Kremlin and its armies have been accused of war crimes since day one.

In Kramatorsk, emergency workers scurried in and out of the restaurant overnight as residents stood outside embracing and surveying the damage from the strike.

The building was reduced to a twisted web of metal beams. Police and soldiers emerged carrying a stretcher bearing a man in military trousers and boots. He was placed in an ambulance, though it was not clear whether he was still alive.

‘There were a lot of people in there – there are children under the rubble,’ said Yevgen, who had been dining with two friends.

Two men screamed in frenzied tones for a tow rope, then ran back towards the rubble.

‘I ran here after the explosion because I rented a cafe here… everything has been blown out there,’ Valentyna, 64, said.

‘None of the glass, windows or doors are left. All I see is destruction, fear and horror. This is the 21st century.’

‘We were just about to leave,’ he said, but one of his friends was now ‘under the rubble’, he said after the explosion.

Rescuers and volunteers carry a young child from the rubble after Russian missile strike hit a restaurant and several houses in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, on June 27

The blast at the Ria Pizza restaurant also wounded at least 56 at the eatery (pictured), popular with both soldiers and journalists in the town of Kramatorsk, one of the largest still under Ukrainian control in the east of the country, where fighting is most fierce

A crowd quickly gathered at the site, where fires continued to burn as soldiers and rescue workers searched for other victims.

Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said two Russian rockets had struck the city that was once home to 150,000 people, one of the largest still under Ukrainian control in the country’s besieged east.

‘There was a good crowd’ at the restaurant when the missile hit, one of its cooks, 32-year-old Ruslan, said.

‘I had just arrived: I was standing there, and then I was buried,’ he said. ‘I was lucky.’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video message that the attacks showed that Russia ‘deserved only one thing as a consequence of what it has done – defeat and a tribunal’. 

Natalia, in tears, said her half-brother Nikita, 23, was inside near the pizza oven.

‘They can’t get him out, he was covered’ by debris, she said.

Video footage posted by the Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko showed wailing emergency vehicles pulling into the affected area and rescue teams in protective equipment moving in the building’s shattered structure.

Other footage on military Telegram channels showed one man, his head bleeding, receiving first aid on the pavement. 

‘People told me they heard a plane flying, there was a hissing and then an explosion,’ a 19-year-old Ukrainian soldier who gave his war name as ‘Ghost’, and was nearby when the strike occurred, told AFP. 

Rescues and volunteers carry a woman rescued from the debris at the site of hotel and restaurant buildings heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike

A view shows a building of a restaurant heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine

An injured man reacts at the site of a hotel building heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike

Rescuers and volunteers work to rescue people from under the rubble after a missile strike hit a restaurant in Kramatorsk

He quickly entered the restaurant to help rescue workers. ‘A girl was trapped, injured. They haven’t yet been able to get her out,’ he said. 

Kramatorsk lies about 18 miles from the front line.

It is a major city west of the front lines in Donetsk province and a likely key objective in any Russian advance westward seeking to capture all of the region.

The city has been a frequent target of Russian attacks, including a strike on the town’s railway station in April 2022 that killed 63 people. There were at least two strikes on apartment buildings and other civilian sites earlier this year.

Source: Read Full Article