'I lost everyone': Ukrainian whose entire family died while attempting to flee conflict speaks out

Ukrainian servicemen trying to help people wounded in the town of Irpin, Ukraine, on March 6. Photo: Andriy Dubchak/AP

Sergii Perebeinis wants the world to bear witness to his grief.

His entire family – his wife, their two children and two dogs – was obliterated as they attempted to flee the conflict in Ukraine. They were taking advantage of Russia's promised safe passage for civilians, but Russian troops fired a mortar as they dashed across a bridge to Kyiv from their suburban town of Irpin.

Photos of the inert bodies of Tatiana Perebeinis, 43, son Nikita, 18, and daughter Alise, nine, and their friend Anatoly Berezhnyi, 26, flashed around the world, igniting outrage.

Tatiana was chief accountant of SE Ranking, a Palo Alto tech startup, where colleagues recalled her as "a friendly, brave, courageous woman with a great sense of humour."

Perebeinis, 43, is a computer programmer.

The stark images quickly became a symbol of the brutality in Ukraine, as indelible as other visceral moments from previous conflicts: the sobbing children fleeing napalm in Vietnam, the young woman keening over dead students at Kent State, Ohio in the United States.

But to Perebeinis, they're more than a symbol. They were his whole world.

"I want to achieve the maximum repost by the press of my grief," he wrote in an email to The Chronicle. "I also plan to apply to world courts, file lawsuits against Russia. This is a war crime and someone needs to be held accountable."

The couple had been happy together for 23 years, he wrote.

"We studied together at the same school, lived in different houses in the same district, but did not notice each other. We met much later, when we studied at the university."

Initially they lived in the city of Donetsk in southeastern Ukraine, near Russia. In a precursor of the current conflict, Russia invaded the region and backed pro-Russian separatist groups that seized control there eight years ago.

"In 2014, after the outbreak of hostilities in the Donbass (the region in which Donetsk is located), we left our hometown forever and moved to Kyiv to live in a rented apartment," he wrote.

"It was five difficult years, but we did not give up and we managed to buy our own housing in the suburbs of Kyiv, in the small beautiful city of Irpin, surrounded on all sides by coniferous forests."

When Russia launched hostilities this year, Irpin became a strategic target as a gateway to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

Perebeinis sent a photo of his towering green apartment building with a gaping hole blown into one exterior wall. After that Russian attack, the family sought refuge in the building's basement, according to Ksenia Khirvonina, a spokesperson for SE Ranking, where Tatiana worked.

Perebeinis had returned to Donetsk this month to help his mother, who had Covid-19, he said. That's why he wasn't with the family.

"On the evening of March 5, I managed to contact my wife for the last time," he wrote. "In our city of Irpin, hostilities were already underway and there were no mobile communications, water, electricity and gas."

His wife planned to evacuate the next day, March 6, Sunday, he said.

The family used Google geolocation to find each other.

"On the morning of March 6, I discovered the geolocation of my wife on the highway between Irpin and Kyiv," he wrote. "The phone worked, but no one answered the calls. The children's phones were also turned off."

Then his wife's phone moved. It was at a city hospital in Kyiv.

"I called my friends in Kyiv and asked them to come to the hospital to look for the family," he wrote.

"After 15 minutes, a text message appeared on Twitter about the shelling of civilians during the evacuation and that a family had died. After another 15 minutes, photos of those killed from the scene appeared on Twitter, and I identified my children by their clothes and personal belongings."

His wife died in the hospital a day later, he wrote.

The family had carried their Yorkshire terriers – Benz and Cake – in a small green carrier as they tried to flee.

"One dog died on the spot," Perebeinis wrote. "The second one I managed to find through Facebook at the animal clinic. The dog was kept on therapy for a day and also died."

Now Perebeinis said he will dedicate himself to seeking justice for their deaths.

"I will go to the end," he said. "I lost everyone and lost the meaning of life." – San Francisco Chronicle/Tribune News Service