By Max Hunder
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (Reuters) – Outside an apartment block scarred by the missile strike that struck a bustling restaurant in Ukraine’s city of Kramatorsk this week, a mother sat still on Friday, resting a pale hand on the head of each of her two dead twin daughters.
Fourteen-year-olds Anna and Yuliia Aksenchenko were among 12 people who were killed when a Russian missile hit a pizza restaurant in the eastern city on Tuesday evening. They had been in the vicinity of the restaurant during the attack.
On Friday morning, the family held a mourning ceremony for them at their apartment several hundred metres away from the site.
The missile came hurtling out of the sky on a balmy summer evening, when the restaurant and its large outdoor terrace were packed with customers.
Three days later, the middle-aged mother of the twins looked completely drained of vitality as she sat by the graves of her daughters in a black leather jacket.
She sat motionless with one hand on each daughter for half an hour, her body slumped and her head bowed.
The woman could scarcely walk, as if incapacitated by her grief. She had to be supported when walking by the girls’ father and another relative.
None of the family members were in any condition to speak to reporters, the girls’ godfather said.
The girls lay in coffins with open caskets, but were covered with a glistening white and gold sheet.
Mourners said the girls had been dressed in wedding dresses for their burial, a custom in Ukraine for girls who die too young to marry.
Initially unable to find two wedding dresses in a city not far from the front and where wedding parlours are closed, friends and family issued an online appeal for well-wishers to donate two dresses so that the girls could be buried.
“This is a tradition. If girls become angels, go up to heaven before getting married, they are dressed in wedding dresses so they can find their other half there,” said Viktoria Kushka, 50, a teacher who taught Anna and Yuliia in first grade.
Speaking in one of the classrooms at the nearby school where the girls studied, Kushka recalled her memories of the girls.
Some of the school’s windows had been shattered by the strike.
“I remember them in first grade. They were two little sunshines. With fair hair, always (tied) with a big white ribbon, smiling, big light blue eyes. Always together, always supporting each other.”
At the ceremony, a crowd of around 30 relatives, friends and local residents gathered to pay their respects.
(Editing by Tom Balmforth)
