More than 100 people gathered around the chestnut-coloured coffins in the Ukrainian city of Sumy of a mother and daughter killed in a double Russian missile attack that has unleashed international condemnation.
Maryna Chudesa, 43, and her mother Lyudmyla Sergiyenko, 64 were killed by a missile on Sunday as they rushed to the scene of an earlier strike to help the wounded.
Holding flowers and murmuring respectfully, friends and relatives formed a circle around a priest giving an eulogy in front of the building where the women lived.
“They did not drive by, they did not flee — but they stopped to help the people who were hit by the first missile. The second one took their lives,” the priest said.
At least 35 people were killed in one of the deadliest Russian strikes of the three-year war that was a stark reminder of the war’s daily civilian toll as Moscow resists US President Donald Trump’s push for a ceasefire.
Russia fired two missiles at the centre of Sumy at a time when many were heading to church for Palm Sunday, a major Christian feast.
It drew fresh accusations that Moscow had employed the “double tap” tactic — an initial strike followed by a second minutes later, to kill and wound first responders rushing to help.
“They died as true heroes,” the priest said of Maryna and Lyudmyla.
His eulogy did not stop the tears of mourners, among them many teenagers from the school where Maryna taught biology.
Standing next to her open coffin, Maryna’s two daughters buried their faces in the chest of her husband, Volodymyr Chudesa.
– ‘Take me instead’ –
Natalya Chudesa struggled to step away from the coffin, caressing the face of her daughter-in-law led in the open casket.
“We always went to the sea together, went on fishing trips together, picking mushrooms in the forest together. I don’t know how to live without them,” she said.
In the car that carried Maryna’s coffin to the cemetery, Natalya pointed to the spot where the two had stopped their car to rush to help the wounded just 48 hours earlier.
“I am proud of them for being such decent people,” she said, before crying out: “I wish Maryna stayed with her husband and children and that God had taken me instead.”
In the chaos following the attack, Iryna Kashchenko, director of the school where Maryna worked, hoped she had survived as her body could not be found in the morgue.
“You understand, if her body is not in the morgue, then there is a possibility that she is alive,” she had told Maryna’s father-in-law, Ivan Chudesa.
“But the miracle didn’t happen,” she told AFP.
– ‘Can’t take it anymore’ –
Several world leaders have condemned Moscow, which claimed it had targeted an army meeting.
Trump said “they made a mistake” — without specifying who or what he was referring to.
“I don’t believe that it was a mistake, because it’s not possible that two missiles hit the same place,” said Kashchenko.
“It is a weekend, a holiday, people are going to church, people are going to pray, to bless willow branches, and it’s the city centre,” she added.
At the entrance to the school where Maryna taught, a memorial was set up, with flowers and a black-and-white photo of her smiling.
Above it hung the portrait of a former school student killed in the war.
“I don’t comprehend this loss,” Kashchenko said.
At the cemetery, Ivan was also struggling to come to terms with the death of his daughter-in-law.
He had known Maryna since she was a girl, as her and his son, Volodymyr, had been childhood friends before falling in love.
“I told her in her coffin ‘I can’t believe it, my old brain can’t comprehend the fact that I won’t see you alive again in my life’,” he told AFP.
Standing next to the coffin, he called on the last mourners to pay their respects before it was closed and lowered into the ground.
Then, with heavy heavy tears running down his reddened faced he said: “Close it up guys, I can’t take it anymore.”
