In the photo, Anna Haidarzi and her four-month-old son Timofi are barely visible under a bloody blanket. They lie in the rubble at the feet of rescue workers in black and fluorescent uniforms. Only two arms can be seen sticking out of the blanket: the 31-year-old mother's arm and her son's.
“It was like saying goodbye,” Serhiy Mudrenko, one of the rescuers, said of the footage.
Their bodies were found in the smoking ruins of an apartment building struck by a Russian drone strike in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa, which killed 12 people in March.of photographThe photo, seized by Ukraine's state emergency services, has been widely circulated in Ukraine and has been taken as a tragic symbol of the horrific toll Russia's war has taken on civilians.
Anna's husband and Timofey's father, Serhii Haidarzh, 32, accompanied rescue teams through the rubble throughout the search. He survived the strike along with the couple's two-year-old daughter Lizzie and was hoping for a miracle.
“We were hoping that Anichka would survive under the rubble,” Haidarji said, using his nickname.
The Haidarzi couple had been married for more than three years. Friends and family said the two were inseparable and acted like young lovers. It is said that he often brought flowers to his wife. He listed her number on her cell phone as “My Love.” And when possible, couples took dates to enjoy sunsets along the nearby estuary.
“We savored every moment,” he said. “We were living life to the fullest.”
But now, after hours of searching after the March 2 attack and standing near the destroyed building, he knew this part of his life was over. Then his friend, also a rescue worker, looked up at him from the rubble and took off his helmet. “I knew right away,” Haidarji said.
His story is just one of many tragedies that many Ukrainians have experienced since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022. According to the United Nations, the Russian attack has killed thousands of civilians, shattered dreams, destroyed families and ended love stories.
An amateur photographer, he extensively documented his family life on Instagram. His photographs symbolize what has been lost: a trip across Ukraine with his wife, a family picnic on the Black Sea, watching Timofey grow up.
He said he now has to endure “this loss, this grief” that countless other Ukrainians have grappled with and the often excruciating questions that accompany it: why was his wife killed in the strike and not him? Told. How can I make Lizzy understand that she will never see her mother or brother again?
“It's very painful,” he said in an interview at his wife's parents' home in the port city of Odesa, his eyes filling with tears. “It will take some time for me to come back to my senses.”
Haidarzi met Anna at a Baptist summer camp outside Odesa in 2020. She was the pastor's seventh child of nine children and had a “zest for life” and a dazzling smile, he recalled.
“It's love at first sight. You take one look at her and you know she's the one,” he said. When her camp was coming to an end, he sat with her by the campfire and she told him he liked her. “Before we knew it, we were holding hands, just like that.”
Two weeks later he proposed. Anna, a florist and decorator, designed the wedding, which was held at her father's church in October 2020. “I'll do it,” she replied, under an arch of dried flowers, red roses and reeds that Anna had picked herself. She was making the dress herself.
“She was able to create something beautiful out of nothing,” said Nadia Sidak, one of her sisters and one of many in Odesa who describe her as warm, generous and creative. said.
A year after the couple got married, Lizzy was born, a cheerful girl with curly blonde hair. Her father says she has trouble falling asleep for long periods of time and he often asks her to stay by his side while she snoozes. Timofey was born in October 2023.
By that time the war in Russia was well advanced, and Odessa, which had been relatively unscathed at the start of the fighting, was under attack almost daily. Moscow had targeted the city's port in a bid to cut off maritime exports, the lifeblood of Ukraine's economy.
The noise of Russian attack drones, like lawn mowers, has become familiar to many residents of Odesa.
Still, the couple “tried to enjoy life the same way and continue to live the same way,” Haidarji said. The president of a company that manufactures airbags, he usually leaves for work early in the morning, but tries to come home early in the afternoon to help his wife raise children, often with a bouquet of flowers in his hand.
Whenever possible, they were able to leave Lizi and Timofey with their families and walk together along the estuary near their home in northern Odesa.
According to Lieutenant Colonel Serhii Sudets, a member of the air defense unit that protects Odesa, at around 1 a.m. on March 2, a drone flew over the river mouth, entered the neighborhood and crashed into a building.
That night, Lizzy and her father were sleeping in their bedroom. Her mother was sleeping next to her in the couple's bedroom, holding Timofey. That bedroom collapsed after the strike. But not Lizzy's.
“Out of nowhere, I heard this loud explosion,” Haidarji recalled. He woke up and rushed to the other bedroom. “I started screaming, 'My love!' But all I found was the door. Our bedroom was gone.”
As the building goes up in flames, he and Lizzy escape from the remains of the apartment and land on top of the rubble.Rescue teams quickly arrived and departed. Exploring the pitch black nightuse chainsaws and excavators to cut and remove concrete slabs.
All nine floors of the building partially collapsed, crushing some residents to death. Haidarji recalled the injured woman saying “she just screamed and it pissed her off.”
Residents who survived the attack said they remembered Haidarzi walking around near the rubble and calling his wife's phone, hoping for a miracle. Hours passed and there was no sign of her.
Then, at 5:56 p.m., he received a notification from the cell phone company he was desperately trying to contact. “Dear me, I'm back online,” it read.
Rescuers had just discovered her body and her mobile phone next to Timofey.
Mr. Haidarji's attention is now focused on Rigi.
“Sometimes she asks where her mother and Timosha are, and we tell her they are in heaven with Jesus,” he said, using Timofey's nickname. “Thank God she doesn't understand, because that would be traumatic for the child.”
The death brought back painful memories for Anna's family. In 1968, during the Soviet Union's crackdown on religious groups, her grandfather, a Baptist minister, was imprisoned for five years and then exiled to eastern Siberia. Her mother spent part of her childhood there.
On a recent afternoon, around a table strewn with pastries and sandwiches, the family reflected on three generations oppressed or killed by Moscow. Anna's father, Mykola Sidak, said the Kremlin was now trying to reassert control over Ukraine “so Russia can get everything from the Soviet Union again.”
The family's story and grief resonated widely in Ukraine. More than 700 people attended his funeral on March 6, at the same church where they were married. According to his family, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was also scheduled to attend, but had to cancel after a Russian missile landed several hundred meters from him during a visit to Odesa that day, killing five people. .
The sound of a missile explosion echoed throughout the funeral, startling the mourners.
Reflecting on his life at a separate memorial service, Haidarzi said: “Everything happened so quickly for us.”
“I couldn't believe I was married and had such a wonderful wife. Everyone asked me, 'Can you believe it?' I said no. 'At that time I couldn't believe we were having a child,' she said of Timofey. “And now I can't believe they're no longer with us.”
Daria Mitiuk Contributed to the report.