War Is Not Hell, It's Senseless And Evil
Too often, those who suffer are those who have no stake in the conflict
I’m not a parent, so I can’t begin to imagine, much less explain, the pain of losing a child. I certainly hope that I never have to experience losing a spouse. However, I’ve lived and worked in a war zone, and I can speak to the senselessness and randomness of the evil that war can visit upon the innocent at a moment’s notice.
Serhiy Perebyinis went from having a wife and two children to being alone in the split-second it took a random Russian mortar shell to shatter his world. Even worse, he learned about it by seeing a photograph on Twitter. Even in the senseless, bloody war that is the conflict in Ukraine, that’s unimaginably brutal. I can’t fathom how someone begins to process such a searing, gut-wrenching loss.
That Erin Burnett had trouble maintaining her composure and professional detachment is nothing she has reason to be ashamed of. I don’t know how any compassionate human being could listen to Perebyinis’ story without being profoundly impacted by it. I found myself fighting back tears listening to him talking about the family he’s lost
Images captured by New York Times journalists and circulated around the world showed four bodies on the street in Irpin after the Russian military shelled a civilian evacuation route.
The four were Perebyinis’ wife, Tatiana, his 18-year-old son, Mykyta, his 9-year-old daughter, Alisa, and Anatoly Berezhnyi, a church volunteer who was helping the family evacuate.
Perebyinis told Burnett that he suspected something was wrong on Sunday morning when he saw his wife’s phone’s geolocation had moved from Irpin to a hospital in Kyiv. Soon after, he saw on Twitter that a family had died in the mortar shelling.
“And then I saw a photo on Twitter, and I recognized my children. I recognized their things and their clothes,” he said, according to a live translation.
Serhiy Perebyinis was in eastern Ukraine caring for his ailing mother when Tetiana decided it was time to leave after a Russian shell hit their apartment building in Irpin, about 30 miles northwest of Kyiv.
To escape Irpin, the family had to cross 100 yards of exposed street on the side of a destroyed concrete bridge with no cover. As Tetiana and her two children attempted to traverse the exposed road, a Russian mortar shell landed 12 yards away. Shards from the explosion killed them instantly. They never stood a chance.
I share the picture of the aftermath of the Russian mortar shell attack not because I want to be gratuitously gruesome but because I believe in being honest about the cost and the damage of war. I’ve been in a war zone, and seeing it on my television has induced a form of PTSD. Though it’s been 27 years, eastern European countries look very similar in many respects. I see rural Croatia in many of the photos and videos I’ve seen- and it hasn’t been an easy thing to relive.
Serhiy Perebyinis didn’t deserve to lose his family, especially in the senseless manner that claimed them. No one does. He should still be the anonymous middle-class Ukrainian he was before, happy with the life he had with his wife and two children. I suspect he’d give anything to have that life and anonymity back.
Now he has to adjust to losing not only his loved ones but also to experiencing the destruction of his homeland. Ukraine has become a country with thousands of sad and tragic stories, each senseless and impossible to understand.
Serhiy and Tetiana had been high school sweethearts. They married in 2001 and lived in an apartment in Irpin along with their two children, Mykyta, 18, and Alisa, 9, and their two dogs, Benz and Cake. They had a Chevy minivan and shared a country home with friends. Tetiana was an avid gardener and skier who’d just returned from a ski trip to Georgia.
They were perfectly typical members of a growing Ukrainian middle class. Tetiana Perebyinis worked for a software company with offices in California and London. Mykyta was in college and wanted to be an IT professional.
A Russian war crime robbed Serhiy Perebyinis of what he most loved in this world. His wife and children had no stake in the war; they were trying to escape to safety. There’s no reason why the Russians should have been firing mortar shells into an area with no military targets- yet that’s what they’ve been doing all over Ukraine. It appears part of a strategy to terrorize the populace and force them to flee.
Sadly, there are too many stories like that of the Perebyinis family, people who wanted nothing more than to live together in peace. Now Serhiy must deal with the loss of his life partner and his two children, murdered by the Russians in a barbaric, senseless act of terrorism.
How does one begin to put one’s life back together after a tragedy of such unimaginable proportions? After years of building a life around the woman you love and the children you adore, how does one adapt to life without them? How does one cope with the senseless act of terror that ripped them from you instantly?
The saddest part of this is that the Russian army has no problem inflicting this sort of pain upon Ukrainians, who pose no threat to them. They’re actively targeting noncombatants and nonmilitary targets like apartment buildings and hospitals. They’re committing war crimes every day, and while we can hope that someday the international community will hold someone to account, ordinary Ukrainians are suffering unimaginably right now.
If you have a spouse and children, today is a perfect day to be thankful for them and to be grateful that you’re not living in peace and safety. Unfortunately, Serhiy Perebyinis now has only memories of his wife and children. I can only hope that no one reading this will ever experience that sort of pain and loss.
Слава Україні.
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