The Japan Times - 'Back home': family who fled front buried after Kyiv strike

Mykyta, 23, and Sofia, 22, fled their front-line hometown of Sloviansk for the capital Kyiv, where they made a home for their two-year-old son Lev and the baby Sofia was expecting.

"Young people always have plans. It seems their whole life is ahead of them -- they want more, anything can be overcome," Sofia's father Svyatoslav Gaponov told AFP.

Around three years after they fled the fighting, however, the war caught up with them.

Last week, a Russian missile tore through their nine-storey residential building. Attacks that night killed 32 people in Kyiv.

The hours-long barrage was one of the worst on Kyiv since Russia invaded in 2022, and served as a stark reminder of the dangers Ukrainians face even far from the front.

At their funeral in Sloviansk, Gaponov, a respected member of the protestant congregation, led the funeral with a steady voice as mourners sobbed.

Sofia's grandmother clasped her hands and wept silently during a slideshow of the couple holding a beaming Lev.

"They were young and we thought they'd be better off in Kyiv. It was quieter," said Gaponov, 45.

More than 422,700 people from across Ukraine have taken refuge in Kyiv, city officials say, in part because of the sophisticated air defence systems around the capital.

Sloviansk lies in the Donetsk region, which has seen the worst fighting of Russia's invasion. It is also where pro-Kremlin separatists rose up in 2014, capitalising on instability after nationwide pro-democracy demonstrations.

The Kremlin-backed rebels captured the industrial city briefly before being pushed out by Ukrainian forces soon after.

- 'Hi, are you alive?' -

Despite that fighting, Sofia's childhood friend Daria Pasichnychenko has blissful memories of their teenage years together.

She recalled her 17th birthday, when Sofia's parents barred her from attending because the girls could act "a little crazy."

"We begged them with tears in our eyes," the 22-year-old said, adding that eventually they convinced Sofia's parents.

"They already knew that I couldn't live without her," she told AFP in the empty church in Sloviansk after the service.

In Kyiv, the women lived around the corner from each other, near the supermarket where Mykyta worked. They checked in with each other when air raid sirens rang out and explosions boomed overhead.

Moscow is intensifying its attacks, firing more drones at Ukraine last month than any other since invading, according to an AFP analysis.

In the early hours of July 31, Russia launched 309 drones and eight missiles -- one of which hit Sofia's home.

"I just messaged her in the morning: 'Hi, are you alive?'" Pasichnychenko said.

"I'm still waiting for a reply."

- 'How painful and difficult' -

It took one full day for the family to receive confirmation that Sofia, Mykyta and Lev were killed.

But Sofia's mother, Natalya Gaponova, said she found solace in knowing that her daughter was together with her family.

"My husband told me: Imagine if they had been with us and only Mykyta died, how painful and difficult it would have been for her'," she said.

They were killed instantly and in their sleep, the family told AFP, citing an autopsy.

"That was probably the best thing for the three of them. Why? Because they were all together," Gaponova said.

Two coffins and a smaller one were brought to the local cemetery under a scorching sun.

Mykyta's mother stood almost motionless as a choir sang, and then collapsed on the coffins.

Lev's was lowered into the ground last, after his parents.

"It's important that we bring them back home to Sloviansk," Gaponov said. "One day we will all meet again."

K.Yoshida--JT