#moments #ukrainian #girl
A happy, spirited four-year-old beams with pride as she pushes her own stroller in a video recorded by her mother to document their day together in central Ukraine.
About an hour later she was dead, her short life brutally ended by a Russian missile, the pink buggy overturned in the street and spattered with the little girl’s blood, next to her lifeless body.
Liza Dmitrieva, who suffers from Down syndrome, was taken by her mother Iryna to a treatment center in Vinnytsia, a city of around 370,000 people 250 kilometers southwest of the capital Kyiv, on Thursday.
In the footage, which Iryna posted to social media at 9:38 a.m., Liza can be seen hopping down the sidewalk in white leggings and a sky blue top with what appears to be a daisy sewn on her shoulder.
Aside from the difficulties of living in a country at war, neither had any particular reason to fear. They were hundreds of kilometers from the nearest front line.
“Where are we going, honey?” The woman asks her daughter on camera.
“Alla!” replies the four-year-old, tossing loose strands of stringy blond hair that’s been tied back with a white clip in the shape of a butterfly.
Alla is a common female given name in Ukraine.
“To see Alla?” ask the mother.
“Alla!” the boy is chirping again, a mischievous grin playing across her face.
– Social Media Starlet –
About 80 minutes later, rocket fire from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea hit Vinnytsia, devastating the city center and killing 23 people, including two other children.
Liza’s mother Iryna lost a leg in the attack and is believed to have died later in hospital, but the state police chief said Friday she was still fighting for her life.
Iryna regularly posted pictures and messages of her daughter’s exploits and many challenges online, where the little girl had become something of a social media starlet.
An Instagram account set up by Iryna and dedicated to Liza amassed nearly 20,000 followers, although that number had grown to 80,000 by Friday morning, when the horror of the attack sent shockwaves around the world.
“Look how she spins. She loves dresses!” Iryna says in a post alongside a video of the little girl in a lavender field, playfully twirling around in her purple dress.
“I am so happy to be the main role model for my child. She does absolutely everything – dances, movements, posing in front of a mirror, everyday things,” Iryna reveals in another post.
“When I do sports, she does that too. I paint, she copies.”
– “Open act of terrorism” –
First Lady Olena Zelenska said in the early hours of Friday she was “appalled” by images of the overturned stroller released by local authorities – only to be told it belonged to Liza, who met her.
“As I read the news, I realized I know this girl. I knew…I’m not going to write down every word I want to say to those who killed her,” she wrote on Instagram.
Zelenska explained that she met Liza while she was recording a video about the Christmas holidays.
“The little girl managed to color not only herself and her dress in just half an hour, but also all the other children, me, the cameramen and the director.”
Posting the video with her message, the first lady implored her Instagram followers: “Please look at her alive. I cry with their loved ones.”
Russia invaded on February 24th. The conflict has killed thousands, destroyed cities and forced millions to flee.
Officials said Vinnytsia suffered widespread damage in what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later described as “an open act of terrorism.”
Images released by officials showed the burned skeletons of several overturned cars next to a burned-out building held up by charred metal frames, and brown smoke billowed from the impact site.
Sergiy Borzov, the head of the regional government, said Friday that 13 victims, including the other two children, have yet to be identified.
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