Viktor Gubarev went out to buy bread when he was killed by a fragment of a shell that fell in front of his apartment building in Kharkov, Ukraine, on Monday, minutes before his daughter arrived to find an ambulance crew standing over his body.
The crew had to detain Jana Bacek while transporting her father’s body after the bombings that hit the Soviet-era housing complex where they live.
An English teacher, she said she was preparing an online lesson in the kitchen of her one-bedroom apartment near her parents’ apartment when the shelling began.
“I only remember the explosion,” she said. “I just got back from shopping and crazy explosions, noise.”
Bacek and her partner, Yevgeny Vlasenko, meet at her family’s apartment on Wednesday, two days after her father’s murder. (Alkis Konstantinidis / Reuters)
Her mother Lyubov immediately called in a trembling voice and said that her father had gone to buy bread and was still outside. Her partner, Eugene, stopped her immediately to throw her away in case there were any subsequent blows, as she had, seconds later.
“I started calling him and there was no answer,” she said.
When she put on her coat and came out a few minutes later, her painful reaction to the sight of her father’s body was captured by photographers who arrived by ambulance shortly after the explosions.
“I’m sorry. I want to forget it. The photo. The last photo I saw of him,” Bacek said.
Bachek is comforted by his partner Vlasenko and his mother Lyubov Gubareva as he mourns his father’s body. (Alkis Konstantinidis / Reuters) Bacek cries in the arms of first aid after his father’s death. (Alkis Konstantinidis / Reuters)
Along with mass graves in Bucha near Kyiv or the destruction of the port city of Mariupol, the indiscriminate shelling of cities such as Kharkiv began to symbolize what the Kremlin called its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Russia says its invasion aims to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies reject this as a false pretext for war.
Russia denies targeting civilians and rejects what Ukraine says is evidence of atrocities, saying Ukraine organized them to undermine peace talks.
Medical workers and first aid teams removed Gubarev’s body. (Alkis Konstantinidis / Reuters)
A grandfather who liked to tinker with cars
Gubarev’s death was one of at least three Monday in Kharkov, which has come under almost daily bombing since Russia launched its invasion on February 24th.
A former driver who started working at the age of 16 and rose to become a fleet manager at Gazprom, the 79-year-old is reluctant to leave due to his and his wife’s health problems.
Bachek holds a photo of his mother and father on Wednesday. (Alkis Konstantinidis / Reuters)
Sitting in her kitchen, occasionally struggling with tears, Bacek, their only child, shares family photos showing her father with an Elvis-style suitcase during the Black Sea holidays, glowing with love or rocking his granddaughter playfully. your in a shopping bag.
She described growing up in a middle-class family with little money at the end of Soviet Ukraine, studying hard at school with her mother, a piano teacher who loved concerts and theater, and her father, who loved tinkering with cars and jokes with his daughter.
“In his normal life, even in war, he tried to smile, to joke, to support us. She told us, “You are my girls, my heroes,” she said.
A crater made by the shell that killed Bacek’s father can be seen near a playground. (Alkis Konstantinidis / Reuters)
Now she is waiting for her father to be buried, but here too the war has imposed additional agony as the death toll has risen and normal burials have become impossible.
“It’s not like we used to be – a cemetery, a grave, a special place where I can be separated from other people, calm down, talk, cry, put out the Easter cake,” she said, referring to a Ukrainian memorial custom.
While the family waited for news, Gubarev went out to buy leftovers, still in its plastic wrap, on a table in the hallway, where she touched him briefly every time she went to the door.
“The bread was in blood,” she said. “I can’t hold it in my hands now, but I want to because it’s part of my father. That was the last thing he had in his hands.”
Bacek and her partner are standing in front of the entrance to their apartment building. (Alkis Konstantinidis / Reuters) The bread Gubarev was carrying when he was killed can be seen in his daughter’s home. (Alkis Konstantinidis / Reuters)
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