Evhen Ryabukon was standing in front of the coffin. It was not just a coffin. He was inside. The part of his soul and a bright dream of his life. In the form of Elisei, his 13-year-old son is sleeping inside forever. He patted the coffin gently and appeared to be having a final conversation with his son. He broke down, over and over again, before he could finish.
His wife Inna was burning inside. Who can measure the depth of the sorrow of a mother who lost her son. She adjusted the framed photo of a smiling, young boy placed on the coffin – a mother’s last act of care. She might have gone through the first sight of her son when he was born.
The boy was Elisei Ryabukon. He would have been 14 in May.
Just over a month after he was killed in firing by Russian soldiers, his family, friends, neighbors and classmates gathered at a church in the city of Brovary in the east of Kyiv, to say goodbye to this much-loved child from Peremoha village.
A community that had been scattered by war, came together in grief. The endless tears shattered inside the church.
Elisei was remembered as honest, humble and helpful, a boy who didn’t like to fight and who refused to play aggressive sports. The soft-natured teenager now became among the 200 war victims children in Ukraine.
Inna, Elisei, and her younger son were stuck in Peremoha when the fighting started.
“On 11 March, the Russians gave us permission to leave. They even waved us goodbye and wished us luck. Then when we were crossing a field, they started firing at us from every direction,” Inna said.
There were five cars in the convoy of vehicles evacuating. Elisei was in the second car, in which no one survived.
“I crawled through the field and saved my three-year-old son by dragging him by the hood of his jacket. The fact that any of us made it out alive was pure luck,” she said.
She says her younger child is the only reason she’s able to carry on. She’s filed a complaint with the police and wants justice for Elisei’s killing.
“I want the world to know about the crimes of Russia. I want every victim to be counted. I want Russia to be held accountable for the people, children, and women, they have killed on our land,” she said.
Evhen and Inna Ryabukon buried their son a month after he was killed by Russian troops near Kyiv. Elisei is among more than two hundred children known to have been killed in Ukraine so far, according to the country’s government.
Many promised lives are falling early from its branches of lives in Ukraine. Let’s pray for each of them to be safe always and to end the war soon as all the Ukrainians long for.