Everything, daughter, mom loves you while

The story of a woman with a red manicure killed in Buch

In April, Reuters published pictures from Buchi, which Russian troops left. On one of the frames was the hand of a dead woman with a red manicure and a heart image on one of the nails. On it, relatives recognized the deceased Irina Filkin. "Cold" tells her story.

On the morning of February 24, 52-year-old Irina Filkina went to Kyiv to work in the Epicenter shopping complex, located about 25 km from her house in the village of Mikhailovka-Ribzhovka. There she worked as a boiler room operator.

Because of the war, she had to stay in a shopping center for a week. Her daughters left for Poland to help Ukrainian refugees there. And she waited for shelling in the basement of Epicenter on Berkovetskaya Street on the outskirts of Kiev and, if possible, tried to help Kievans and the Ukrainian military-Irina was preparing food for them, her youngest daughter, 26-year-old Olga Shchruk, tells the “cold”.

Until March 5, Irina remained there, because, according to Olga, it seemed to her that it was safe at the epicenter - but after other employees began to be evacuated from there, the woman decided to go home too. Her eldest daughter explained to the TSN TV channel that there was a cellar where you can hide.

Olga says that she was perplexed why her mother was the only one who remained in the "epicenter". She served with her mother how it happened that the colleague who left the shopping center did not take her with them. “Well, like that. They said that they have no place, ”her mother answered her.

Olga and his sister were looking for a volunteer among the friends who could take his mother home. “And we almost found, our acquaintance was supposed to come to her, who helps people get. He drove people from Kyiv to Lviv, to the west of Ukraine. But he had to wait two days, and there they began to shoot strongly, at the “epicenter” it became unsafe. And she decided to go herself, ”says Olga. According to her, Irina as a whole was very independent and stubborn and it was difficult to argue with her decisions.

Irina Filkina reached the nearest village, where someone gave her a bicycle, and she went home on it. Irina's path passed through Buch and Irpen. “She did not go to Buchu itself, but went home through Buch. She did not know that the invaders were already standing there, she did not know what they were doing with people, ”Olga says.

Having reached the center of Irpen, from where she had to get to the house for 15 minutes, Irina called her daughter. “I told her:“ Mom, there is an evacuation from Irpen now, they will evacuate everyone. Throw great, run to the river, now they will take you. Do not go home, ”Olga recalls their conversation. She says that in the morning she read telegram channels that day and knew about hostilities and occupation. “Everything, daughter, mom loves you, for now. It’s hard for me to pedal, I will call you back, ”Olga Irina answered. But I did not call back.

Olga Shchrukku that day stood on her volunteer shift in Poland. It was not possible to get through to the mother. She began to call her neighbors, but there was no connection in her native village. “I thought, maybe she lost the phone - fell along the road, maybe the military took him, they took the phones, asked to take out the cards. I called my neighbors, but none of them caught the network. When I managed to find out that she was not at home, I realized that she had to be sought. Maybe someone took her, or sits somewhere in the basement, maybe the shelling began and she managed to hide, ”says Olga.

She began to write in social networks about what she was looking for her mother. The next day, a man from Irpen wrote on Facebook. He described the appearance of the woman whom he saw: fair -haired, middle -aged, in a blue jacket with the Epicenter emblem. According to him, she drove a bicycle through the Ukrainian KP in the Buchansky district, wrapped it over a turn, and the Russian military shot at it.

Later, NYT will publish a video from the drone, which shows how a certain cyclist rides along the street in Buch, gets off the bicycle and goes with him to the corner on the street occupied by the Russian military. As soon as the cyclist turns, the Russian armored vehicle makes several shots on the roadway. The second armored vehicle makes two shots towards the cyclist. After that, the smoke rises at the place where the person wrapped. Daughters Filkina are sure that their mother is on this video.

“He called the weapon from which they shot at it. You know, I do not understand weapons, somehow there was no need ... I did not think that there were such consequences from him, I thought that maybe this was a simple wound, ”Olga recalls.

According to her, three days after this message she could neither sleep nor eat, “I was just a disconnection”, and then she thought: “Yes, no, she was probably wounded, she climbed into the basement or they took her somewhere.” “And my sister and I tuned himself so that she was alive. We began to call all hospitals, morgues, centers, fill in thousands of Google form that my mother disappeared, on different sites, we were looking for a month. And I hoped that they would find her. I am already on the site where Ukrainians are looking for people - “search for missing” - I know, probably, ”says Olga.

After the Russian troops left Buch and entered the Armed Forces of Ukraine there, Olga sent a photograph of a shot woman who is lying near the bicycle on Yablonskaya Street. There was no face in the photo, but the daughter recognized the mother by the trousers in which she left for work. “I look and understand that this is my mother. And I am to those people who write that all these are fakes, actors, I want to say: “So bring me my mother then! Remove these photos and bring!”. I would like it the most to be a fake, ”says Olga, crying.

Upon learning where the mother’s body is located, the sisters of the Schrukruk began to write to all city services and ask when it is possible to take her body. But the dispatcher on the phone said that this cannot be done, since the terrain is mined. After that, Olga Shiroku ran into bureaucratic wires, because of which the mother’s body still could not take. She retells the conversation with the hotline dispatcher to search for the dead in Buch:

- I know where my mother lies, you can, I will leave a request so that you know that I will come and take her, as soon as everything is cleared there?

- You are registered in Irpen? So call Irpen.

- You probably did not understand. It is located on your territory, let it take.

- I don’t know anything if it is easier for you, fill the form on our site, you will contact you.

- We are losing time, it will be taken away incomprehensible in which direction.

“There are a lot of bodies, they are not 100, not 150, not 300 even, there are a lot of them, they will be unheated all, and who will look for my mother? She lies there, still lies. As a result, after painful conversations, I was told to call on Monday, ”says Olga.

On Monday, April 4, no one picked up the phone on the hotline, and on Tuesday, Olga got there and found out that her mother had already taken away her mother. “They called six points, six, where the bodies were taken away! I lifted everyone, contacted the service where they give information on all the morgues, we began to call all these six points, check. And no one knows anything! " - says Olga.

- Wait, it takes time to make an examination.

- Fuck! Sorry, I know this is my mother. For a month she lay on the ground, a month. I waited for me to pick her up and bury her. And now I do not know how much to wait for you to make an examination? So that the examination proves that she was killed? Can I see her body?

“So Europe wants to know whether Europe needs time to understand whether it was killed or not,” she retells the next telephone conversation with the hotline dispatcher.

“Fuck me your Europe, I ask! - Outrek is outraged in a conversation with the “cold”. “If she constantly needs time, I stopped with me.” She says that the first time she mentally buried her mother on March 6, when she found out about shots. The second time - April 1, when she saw confirmation that she was dead. “And now I can’t bury it normally, because Europe needs time to fill some pieces of paper. Do you understand? She says. - And now I have to wait to experience all this for the third time. Now everyone is talking about her, and tomorrow they will write her down just as another person who died in this territory, they will write down and leave. Where will I look for the body? They will say: “Well, damn it, the body is already a month, you have to put it somewhere.” And they will go somewhere. And I will not find. I don’t know, it’s not just a dog or a cat was killed ... They will kill the cat, people cry. This is my mother, this is a man. And someone has children among the bodies. They will just formally do everything now. Where is the guarantee that they will not bury her simply in the mass grave? And who will let me break it? I was lucky that that photograph circled the whole world. But even with this, no one can help me find the body. Imagine? "

Olga Shchruk says that at first she did not want to communicate with journalists, but then she thought: if she was so killed by her mother’s loss at 20 years old, then what little children who have lost their parents or who were subjected to violence feel? So she decided to create the Ira Mama Foundation . “Mom has always been my support in life, and this fund can become a support for others. There are a lot of children and mothers, and bodies that lie the same way as my mother was lying. Only my mother is now popular, but they are not. No one will speak about them. Many Ukrainians are now spending a lot of energy on anger at the Rashists. If I can convert this power of aggression into love, to help, then I must do it. I can’t resurrect my mother, but what if I can help these children who saw hell, resurrect them to life? ” - says Olga.

Daughters tell about Irina that she was a man who worked all her life. “It's not only about work in the“ epicenter, ”says Olga. -It was her life task as a whole: to build a house, dig the earth, raise children, and make some penny. This is a constant run-bug-bast, a lot of work, but nothing to yourself. ”

Only in recent years, according to her daughters, Irina began to do what she wanted: for the first time in her life she went to sea two years ago, began to buy her clothes - before that she bought clothes to her daughters, and she wore only jeans and one sweater and said that she did not need anything. She began to save money for the car, went to makeup courses for herself. On Valentine's Day, Irina made a red manicure with a heart - in a sign of love for herself, says the makeup artist Anastasia Subacheva, who taught her makeup.

Subacheva says that Irina did not have her own cosmetic bag: sometimes she used the cosmetics of her daughters, but most often she did not paint at all, because she was constantly busy with work, children, husband, everyday life. “And although she said that she was no longer young, already old, life was seething in her and beat with a key. Every time she came to the lesson, the whole studio just shone, because she radiated all this sun. Our lessons began with the fact that I was in shock with how positive it was. It even frightened me at first. Because there are no such positive and ordinary people now. I did not expect this, I did not expect that she would take a leaflet and carefully write down my every word to learn to paint. Because she wants to be beautiful. For yourself. Every time she repeated how happy she was, that she finally began to live for herself, love life, and that it was never too late to do it, ”says Subacheva.

Irina began to lead the page on Instagram, mount the video to the music, wanted to “promote the blog” and was going to go to the concert of the Ukrainian singer Olga Polyakova, says Subacheva. On February 23, they held the last individual lesson under the Makeup program.

“She gave me such sincere advice, as if she were my mother. In the end, she hugged me, held in her hands a bag with her cosmetics that we bought her. Her cosmetics. And she said that every time she had a night shift at work, she sat and loomed everything, carefully recorded everything on the video, all our moments. Half of the people that she had. Half of people like her, like her. And I want everyone to remember Irina not as a photo of a hand with a manicure, but as a photo of a beautiful woman who changed the life of many. Who changed my personal life, because now I understand that you do not know what will happen to you tomorrow, you don’t know when life will turn over. Today you get your first cosmetics and are going to start living for yourself, paint, meet with friends, and tomorrow you are shot when you are trying to just escape from the war. I want you to remember this - with a bright red manicure and heart. Because it is she who is this heart, ”says Subacheva.

On each of the nine floors of the “epicenter” they knew Filkin, she was so sociable, her daughters say. She “retained warmth and comfort at workplaces”, and in her free time she looked after office flowers, write in a post dedicated to her in the account of the shopping center. “We went to rest with her, we arrived the next time the same hotel, where we were last time, and you know how the employees said there? “Oh, my mother Ira arrived,” says Olga Shekeruk. “Some of my friends also call her“ Mom Ira ”, and when they write to me the words of sympathy, they don’t say“ your mother is sorry, ”they write:“ So Ira’s mother is not enough ”.

As Olga says, Irina always said to her daughters: "There are no unsolvable tasks." She considered death the only unsolvable task.

Photo on the cover: Archive of Anastasia Subacheva