A cheerful and spirited four-year-old girl proudly pushes her own pram in a video recorded by her mother and posted on Instagram. An hour later, Liza was dead, her life interrupted by a Russian missile fired from the Black Sea, her pink stroller knocked over in the street and stained with the girl’s blood.
Liza Dmitrieva, suffering from Down syndrome (or trisomy 21), was on her way Thursday with her mother Iryna to a therapeutic center in Vinnytsia, a city of around 370,000 inhabitants located 250 kilometers southwest of the capital kyiv. About 80 minutes later, several missiles launched from a Russian submarine patrolling the Black Sea struck Vinnytsia, devastating the city center and killing 23 people, including two other children.
Iryna, Liza’s mother, lost a leg in the attack and was initially pronounced dead, before Ukraine’s police chief said on Friday she was still fighting for her life.