Russia wipes three generations of family with one strike

Plush bears – big and small – are clustered around Adam Bukhai’s grave as if they were supported by a company.

But the 17-month-old is not alone. His mother Sofia Bukhayova, 27 -year -old, is buried in the grave with him, in a gloomy and windy cemetery in the southern city of Ukraine in the overlapping.

Adam’s great-grandmother, 68-year-old Tatiana Tarasevic, is in the grave right next to them.

All three were killed together on November 7 last year by a Russian attack at a war that has swallowed Ukraine since 2022 – but which no longer dominates the international agenda.

Some of Adam’s last moments were filmed by Tatiana in a video on her phone. The two were on a walk with Mom at Adam Sofia. The blond, the blue -eyed Adam wears a red anorak and a woolen hat, with a Mickey Mouse sticker in the front. “Don’t take off your hat,” Tetiana tells him gently, “you’ll be cold.” He does it anyway.

An hour later, the trio was at home, on the way to eat when a Russian led air bomb cut through its apartment block. Adam, Sofia and Teteana were killed, along with six other civilians.

Sofia’s mother Julia Tarasevich, 46 -year -old, is now struggling to continue -without the bigger part of her family, without her past and future.

It is light and flooded with a heavy black coat and grief.

“I don’t know how to live,” she says. “Hell is on the ground. I lost my mother, my daughter and my grandson for a second.” The closest thing she can get to them now is their graves.

“My dear mom,” she says, crying and caressing a photo of Tatiana – a doctor like her – attached to a wooden cross. One step takes her to the grave of Sofia and Adam. She bends to touch his photo, calling him “my little kitten.”

Then she spoke directly in a photo of Sofia – a black -white image of a young woman with long dark hair. “My beautiful daughter,” she cries, “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

The father of Sofia, 60-year-old Sergius Lushchey, is next to her, a healthy figure who shares her loss and sorrow. “We visit the cemetery often,” says Julia, “and we’ll get enough while we live, because it really makes it a little easy.”

Every time they come, more graves extend into the distance. The cemetery is expanding “at a stunning pace,” says Julia. Rows of blue and yellow flags marking the graves of fallen soldiers pierce the dark gray sky.

Zaporizhzhia, where the family lived, is a regular goal for Russian forces. It is a strategically important industrial city, close to leading with a front. The largest European nuclear power plant – about 55 km (34 miles) from the city – is held by the Russians.

On the day of the attack in which they killed Sofia, Tetatiana and Adam, Julia called her daughter from Western Ukraine, where she was on a work trip.

“I told her to be careful. The bombs are falling over the city in the morning. She said, ‘Thank you, Mom, don’t worry. Everything will be fine with us. “

Sergius was at work when he heard something had happened. He also called his daughter, but he had no answer.

Then, in the group of the locals of WhatsApp, he saw a message saying, “Friends, who else is still left under the ruins?”

“I rushed home, praying all the way,” he says, “but my prayers were already in vain.”

“When I arrived, all I saw were ruins. I wandered around looking for my balcony. I don’t know how long it passed – two or three hours – and I realized that there was nothing left and there was no hope of rescue.”

In the days that followed some things, they were restored by the ruins – a Chinese glass of Sofia, somehow a continuous, a toy fish that Adam played in the bath, and the little red jacket he wore on his last walk. These are now family treasures, along with many valuable memories.

“Every night, when I got home from work, I would take Adam for a walk,” says Sergius. “He was very curious about the sky. He would direct his little finger up and we would tell him about it. And he loved birds.”

Another family video shows that Adam rose in the arms of Sofia, spinning from the side and then running around the ground, surrounded by pigeons. “He had almost started talking,” Julia says, “and always smiled. He was healthy, handsome and smart. He and my daughter enjoyed us every day.”

After the full -scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine in February 2022, Julia took Sofia for safety in the UK.

The young woman has put her linguistic skills to use by working as a translator for Ukrainian troops trained by the British military, but she cannot stay away from Ukraine.

“She really missed her parents and her relatives and the country,” Julia says. Sofia returned and later gave birth to Adam in June 2023. She also started psychology because “she knew many people in Ukraine needed psychological help,” her mother says.

In the midst of her grief, Julia knows that Ukraine may soon fall under pressure to negotiate with the enemy who robs her so much.

President Trump returns to the White House – all the weapons that are on fire – insist on peace talks between Moscow and Kiev. But Julia and Sergius are adamant that Ukraine should fight. She tells me that Donald Trump’s claim that he can end the war in a day is “funny to hear.”

“Russia is an aggressor that came to our country and destroyed our homes and our families,” Julia says. “So, there is no talk of cessation of fire or peace talks. If we leave this glutton (Russian President Vladimir Putin) with our territories and we do not take revenge on the people we lost, we will never win.”

Sergius says that the only contact with the Russians in Ukrainian territory should be through battle.

Many Ukrainians believe that even if there is a cessation of fire, Russia will return for more or later – as it did in 2022, eight years after the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Now Moscow controls almost one fifth from Ukraine.

The weather is not on the part of Ukraine. In 2025, there was a danger of several fronts – lack of labor, possible reduction of future US military assistance and fading international attention.

Julia accepts that life continues in other countries.

“People can’t live in constant stress, thinking only of us,” she says.

“However, I would like to remember that a war is happening nearby, where not only soldiers but also civilians die.”

She wants the world to know the names – Adam Bukhaiov, Sofia Bukhayova and Tatiana Tarasevich.

Additional reporting from Anastasiia Levchenko, Volodymyr Lozhko, Goktay Koraltan and Wietske Burema