The father of a three-month old baby killed in a missile strike in Odesa has shared his heartbreak at losing his wife and child.
The attack on an apartment block in the eastern city on Saturday killed eight people, including Yuriy Glodan’s wife Valeria and their three-month old child Kira.
Yuriy had only left his flat and family to go to the shops when he heard the news of the explosion, he told the BBC.
He returned to his home where he demanded that officers allow him inside the burning building where he discovered the bodies of wife, mother and later his three-month old child.
“She was a great mother, friend, with all the best qualities. It will be impossible for me to find somebody else like Valeria. She was perfect. Such a person could be given to you only once in a life and it’s a gift from God.”
“She could find joy in everything. Odesa was her favourite city. She worked in PR and she could communicate with a lot of people, understand them. I admired what a good writer she was,” he said.
Kira had been born at the end of January, just a month before the start of the war.
Valeria had posted on social media about experiencing a “new level of happiness” since Kira’s birth.
“We were so happy when she was born,” he says. “I was in the maternity hospital when she gave birth. It's very hard for me to realise now that my daughter and wife are no longer here. All my world was destroyed yesterday by a Russian missile.”
“What is happening is a grief for my family, for our city, for Ukraine, it's a grief for the whole civilisation. I hope our story helps to stop this war.
President Volodymyr Zelensky was visibly upset when speaking about baby Kira's killing during a press conference on Saturday.
“How did she threaten Russia? It seems that killing children is just a new national idea of the Russian Federation,” Mr Zelensky said in his nightly address to Ukrainians. He described those who had planned and carried out the attach as “bastards”.
Mr Zelensky is due to meet with top US diplomats in Kyiv, a Ukrainian official has said.
It is the highest level visit to Ukraine by an American delegation since the start of Russia’s invasion in February.
The adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, said in an interview on Ukrainian TV late Sunday that the talks are going on "right now."
Mr Zelensky has urged the west to supply his country with more heavy weapons, as Russia continues to bombard the eastern Donbas region.
“You can’t come to us empty-handed today, and we are expecting not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons,” the Ukrainian president said.
