Girl, 4, killed in Russian missile strike laid to rest in Ukraine
A little girl with Down syndrome killed in a Russian missile strike was buried with teddy bears and a crown of white flowers on Sunday, a heart-wrenching image of the human toll the brutal Russian invasion has taken in Ukraine.
Four-year-old Liza Dmytrieva, accompanied by her mother, was going to see a speech therapist in the city of Vinnytsia in central Ukraine when a Russian missile struck Thursday.
Relatives and friends attend the funeral ceremony for Liza, 4-year-old girl killed by Russian attack, in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, Sunday, July 17, 2022. (Efrem Lukatsky/)
Among the dead, which numbered at least two dozen, were Liza and two boys ages 7 and 8.
More than 200 other people were wounded, including Liza’s mother, who was hospitalized in an intensive care unit in grave condition.
The little girl’s body lay in a tiny open coffin in Vinnytsia’s 18th century Transfiguration Cathedral, where her father, Artem Dmytrieva, stood silently with tears flowing down his face.
The family did not tell her mother, 33-year-old Iryna Dmytrieva, about Liza’s burial out of concern that it would worsen her condition.
“Your mommy didn’t even see how beautiful you are today,” Liza’s weeping grandmother Larysa Dmytryshyna said as she caressed the tiny lifeless body.
The family fled the capital Kyiv when the war started for Vinnytsia, a city 167 miles to the southwest that had been considered relatively safe until Thursday’s attack.
Violence intensified, meanwhile, as Russian missiles Sunday struck industrial facilities in the southern Ukraine city of Mykolaiv, a key shipbuilding center in the estuary of the Southern Bug River.
No information was immediately available regarding casualties.
Russian forces are seeking to cut off Ukraine’s entire Black Sea coast to the Romanian border, which would deal a severe blow to the Ukrainian economy and trade.
Such a move also would give Moscow the option of a land bridge to Moldova’s separatist region of Transnistria, where a Russian military base is located.
Early in the war, Ukrainian forces managed to thwart Russian attempts to capture Mykolaiv, but the city, along with the nearby major port city of Odesa, has sustained regular Russian missile strikes in recent weeks.
People walk past their partially destroyed building following a Russian airstrike in the town of Toretske, in the Donetsk region, on July 17, 2022, amid the Russian military invasion of Ukraine. (ANATOLII STEPANOV/)
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Sunday that Russian missiles destroyed a depot for anti-ship Harpoon missiles delivered to Ukraine by NATO allies, a claim that couldn’t be independently confirmed.
In a village near Vinnytsia, one of the young boys killed in the same Russian air strike also was buried Sunday along with his mother, and the burial of another little boy was planned for Monday.
Not long before Liza’s death, Dmytrieva posted a video on social media showing her daughter reaching up to push her own stroller on a walk through Vinnytsia.
Following the Russian missile strike, Ukraine’s emergency services showed photos of the child’s body lying next to her stroller, stained with blood.
The videos and photos have gone viral, horrifying the world.
But Western allies have failed to unite over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the global consequences.
A meeting of financial leaders of the Group of 20 richest and biggest economies last week in Bali failed to reconcile their differences over the war in Ukraine.
The event in Indonesia followed a gathering of G-20 foreign ministers earlier in the month that also produced no unified agreement on how to address the conflict.
Russian forces recently have been focused on trying to take control of the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.
Ukraine says its military still has control of two villages in the Luhansk region, one of the two Donbas provinces, and are fending off Russian efforts to move deeper into the second region, the Donetsk.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian military said Sunday that its troops thwarted Russian advances toward Sloviansk, a key stronghold in Donetsk, and other attacks in the region.
With News Wire Services
