In the shadow of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, a sacred space long used by Kyiv residents to honor fallen soldiers and prominent lives lost to Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion, an unusual and devastating scene unfolded Tuesday. Where coffins of grown military personnel usually lie, two small white caskets stood side by side, holding the bodies of 12-year-old Liubava Yakovlieva and 17-year-old Vira Yakovlieva. The sisters were among 24 civilians killed when a Russian missile slammed into their Kyiv apartment building on May 14, trapping them under collapsed concrete. Their mother Tetiana is now the only surviving member of her family: her husband Yevhen, a Ukrainian soldier, died in combat on the front line three years prior.
Dozens of children, the two girls’ classmates from local schools, filed through the monastery dressed in all black, leaning on one another for support as they said their final goodbyes. Buckets placed at the foot of the coffins quickly overflowed with bouquets, with more floral tributes spread across the stone floor. Photos propped on the caskets showed the blond sisters, Liubava full of childlike energy and Vira wearing her signature glasses. Grown mourners and children alike wept openly through the service; standing among the crowd were several of Yevhen’s former brothers-in-arms, who came to pay their respects to the entire fallen family.
Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Yevhen was known across his community as a gifted home cook, an enthusiastic fisherman, and a handyman who could fix almost anything for neighbors and friends. When Russian forces crossed Ukraine’s border, he immediately enlisted in the Ukrainian military, and was killed in action near the village of Dibrova in the Luhansk region in April 2023. Now, the war that took his life has reached the rest of his family, leaving his wife with no surviving kin.
Footage captured by Current Time, a project operated by Radio Liberty, shows Tetiana speaking to rescuers in the immediate aftermath of the May 14 strike, as workers sifted through the rubble of her home searching for any sign of her daughters. “I already lost their father, my husband, a defender of Ukraine,” she told reporters at the scene. “I don’t know if they are alive or if they have already gone to be with their father. To say this is very painful tells you nothing. You cannot understand the weight unless you have felt it yourself.”
Dmytro Koval, who taught Vira painting and drawing at a Kyiv art college, remembered the teen as an exceptional student: strong-willed, unafraid to share her unique perspective, and deeply kind to her peers. When news of her death reached the campus, the entire community was left reeling from shock. “When death comes for people you saw and talked to just yesterday, it is always very hard, unspeakably hard,” Koval said at the funeral. “We must not live on illusions, on empty dreams, on hopes for some negotiations that will fix everything, because our neighbors are not oriented toward peace.”
Family friend Tetiana Osipova, who served alongside Yevhen in the military and accompanied his body home after his death, said 12-year-old Liubava defied expectations: she appeared small and delicate on the outside, but carried an inner strength that matched her older sister’s. Osipova added that the two girls struggled for years to process the loss of their father, and that on the day of the strike, she stood by Tetiana’s side as rescuers searched the rubble.
Today, Osipova said, Tetiana carries a grief no parent should ever know: she is no longer a wife, and no longer a mother. But despite the unthinkable loss, her friend remains determined to find the strength to honor the memories of her husband and daughters, and to carry on their legacy. “This is an unnatural order of things, when parents bury their children,” Efrem Khomiak, the priest leading the funeral service, told the gathered crowd of mourners. “This funeral, this grief, this tragedy, it is not only your family’s. It belongs to all of Ukraine. Because we are all bound together in this war.”