As if life has just begun

The Russian rocket killed three generations of the Glodan family in Odessa. Here is their story

On April 23, the Russian army fired at Odessa with rockets launched from the Kaspian Sea. One of them got into a 16-story residential building and pierced it through. The fourth and fifth floors of the building collapsed, the building caught fire. As a result of the blow, at least seven people died. Three of them are from the same family: 28-year-old Valery Glodan, her mother Lyudmila and the three-month daughter of Valeria Kira. "Cold" spoke with loved ones Glodan and tells the story of this family.

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Who is friends with whom

“You know, there are people who laugh so contagiously that there is no strength to resist,” recalls Lolita Zorya, a former student of the Kherson secondary school No. 52. That is how her classmate Valery laughed - at the breaks, her laughter spread far along the school corridor.

The “fifty -second” was a regular school in the ordinary panel quarter of Kherson - it was there that the family of Lyudmila and Igor Yavkin and their daughter Valery lived there, who, after marriage, took the surname Glodan. All the friends of Valeria, with whom the “cold” spoke, note that her family always had warm, close relations. “Lera’s mother is just lovely - very kind, open,” says classmate Glodan Alina Tkonetchnaya. - They are so similar! There were like friends. "

Valeria has developed strong friendly relations with classmates. “We had a company of girls: we were sitting next to their desks and constantly argued who was friends with whom,” continues. “They walked after school, arranged their first parties together, prepared numbers for school concerts, walked together with lessons.”

Getting out of school, Valeria moved to Odessa, where she entered the budget department of the Odessa National University named after Mechnikov, to the Faculty of Journalism. She became the head of the course.

“The teachers of Lerus loved,” recalls her classmate and neighbor Alexander Ilyashenko. - Everyone spoke very well about her. But she did not just try to like it, she tried to learn and be a professional. If she didn’t succeed in something, she tried to get to the bottom of the bottom. ”

In addition to profession and study, Lera was very fond of art. “We walked around the museums,” Ilyashenko continues. - With her it was possible to talk about artists, about poets, about such things that few can talk about with now. And she and I could get abroad about some artist. ”

While still a student, Valeria began to work and rent an apartment - she was engaged in marketing and PR. “Lera always responsibly approached work and loved her very much,” says her colleague of the world of Krettsova. “And she also loved to travel and could talk about the places where she was, and the plans where she would go on the next vacation.”

The last holiday

In August 2019, Valeria married a professional baker Yuri Glodan. Shortly before this, the couple bought an apartment, and it turned out that they live in the same house with Ilyashenko and her husband.

“We were friends with families. They got married, were at each other at weddings, gave birth to children in turn. They had a cool, cultural family and it was always fun at home, there was always something to talk about. You could go to Lera and Yura without knocking. When she had a birthday last year, it seems, on Friday or Thursday, Lera said that she was waiting for everyone on Saturday in a restaurant. But friends simply took and came without demand for an apartment on the birthday itself. We all just sat down at the table and began to celebrate, ”recalls Alexandra. - We constantly said that we are well done and make our future ourselves. I remember how Leroy and I said that we were 27-28 years old and we are slowly reaching everything ourselves: we entered the budgets, worked at several works at once, bought apartments, and did repairs. It was as if life had just begun, it was a moment of our formation. ”

Following her daughter from Kherson to Odessa, her mother Lyudmila moved. Alena’s family girlfriend recalls that Valeria and Lyudmila loved classic Soviet films: “Irony of fate”, “Moscow does not believe in tears”, all stories about Schurik-they knew these films and always used some phrases from them in the conversation. All the films knew right from the quotes. Over time, Yura began to speak their quotes in their language. ”

Valeria did not eat meat, and Yuri, on the contrary, loved him very much. “So she had to cook borscht with meat for him without even trying,” recalls Alena. - And he always curtailed her with delicious ones. Before meeting with Yura, she loved the salty more, and as they got married, he began to bring the sweets of his own manufacture home and the salty faded into the background. ”

A few months before the war, Valeria went on maternity leave from the position of a brand manager at the Citrus company, and in January 2022 she gave birth to a daughter of Kira.

“It was a long -awaited child. They planned it, prepared for it, ”says Alexandra Ilyashenko.

“How they were glad when they found out that it was a girl, not to convey,” recalls a close friend of the family of Glodan Alena. - Especially the mother of Luda - as she wanted from the very beginning, and it happened. We celebrated Baby Shower ( a party at which they celebrate the birth of the unborn child. - approx. “Cold” ) with friends and relatives. They laughed a lot. It was the last holiday, where we spent the time so well together. ”

Yuri Glodan was present during childbirth. Already after the death of his family, he told BBC that he cried with happiness when a girl was born to Leroy.

A month after the birth of her daughter, February 5, Valeria wrote a post on Instagram: “These were the best 40 weeks. For a month for our girl ❤️ Dad gave the first flowers. This is a new level of happiness. ”

Granny to the rescue

Early on the morning of February 24, Odessa woke up from explosions. At gas stations, the ATMs and in stores began to line up. A few days later, panic subsided, and Odessaites learned to live with air alarm. Some friends of Lera left the city, but the Glodan family remained. “After the start of the war, my husband and I left, and Lera and Yura decided not to rush to leave,” Alena recalls. “Still, the road with a child who is a month old is not the most correct decision ... and where to go?”

“It's all so strange - Lerochka always thought 10 steps forward,” Alla Koroleva, a colleague of Valeria Glodan, perplexed. “And the fact that she did not leave was struck by me.”

With the outbreak of war, Lera began to help volunteers and carefully watched how things were in her native Kherson, where it was much more restless than in Odessa. Her classmate of Alexander Ilyashenko, who also began to engage in humanitarian aid, says: “We literally on the eve of the [death of Glodan] discussed that we were bored in our small homelands. Lera said that she really wants to, when it ends, still return there and walk in different places. She was very happy when she heard about the victories of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and when she found out that some humanitarian aid was going, she turned to me to help with Kherson too. ”

Regarding Kherson, Lera spoke with her classmate Alina Tkonichnaya, who led the fundraising for occupied Kakhovka. “I no longer live in Kherson, but there is my whole family. In our last dialogue, she asked my relatives to leave. She asked what ways there were, advised, worried. She asked if my grandmother was to hide in case of fighting in the city. She was worried about the whole world, as if she constantly wanted to help. And literally in the morning before the tragedy, she sent another translation with the emoticon “Granny to the rescue”, a few hours before ... And in the evening I already sent help to Yura ... ”.

April 15, a week before the shelling that would kill her, Valeria celebrated her 28th birthday.

“When I congratulated her, she wrote:“ Hurry to us as soon as possible. This is the most important thing !!! ”, Alina Link recalls. - She repeatedly wrote during the war that everything would be fine, let it end faster. Perhaps this was her main dream in the last two months. ”

The last post on Instagram of the deceased said the same thing: “Hear !!! Its ( Vladimir Putin. - Note of the “cold” ) soldiers firing the civilian population from the city, amaze with ballistic and hydrogen missiles residential quarters, orphanages, the maternity hospital of Ukraine - our house! ”

According to Alexandra Ilyashenko, just a couple of days before his death, the Glodan family decided to move from her apartment to the house of Lyudmila to the Tiraz residential complex. Valeria and Yuri were afraid that their house might be under a blow, since next to their height there was an infrastructure object that could be the goal of bombing. “Tiraz”, located in another part of the district, seemed a safer place.

The angel died

All week in front of Easter, Yuri Glodan worked at the Make My Cake cafe, where festive passes were baked under his leadership and his recipe ( as Easter cakes are called in Ukraine. - Approx. “Cold” ). April 23 was his first weekend in a week. In the afternoon, he went to the store for a while, and Valeria, her mother Lyudmila and Kira’s daughter remained in the corner apartment on the fourth floor. It was there for about two in the afternoon that the Russian rocket hit, breaking through the house through. On the fourth and fifth floors there was the strongest blow, they collapsed. A fire began in the house, which rescuers managed to extinguish only after three hours.

The residential complex in which the enemy shell fell was built only 10 years ago. Before the war, in the warm season, in the courtyard of the house they exposed cages with birds - wavy parrots, Corelles and non -membranous. Now rescuers work here, and Odessa citizens bring flowers and toys to the place of tragedy.

Since the beginning of the war, Valery and Alexander Ilyashenko often discussed how to calculate the moment when it was necessary to evacuate from Odessa. The girls raised the same topic in a conversation on the eve of April 23.

“I even have the last conversation with her, we talked with her, I listened to him the other day. It was probably the most terrible conversation, ”recalls Alexandra. - And then I asked her a question: “Ler, what do you think that could be that lighthouse that will indicate that it will definitely need to leave? The signal that is already all, is it time? Because they still sit to the last.” And she and I agreed that this is probably when the first time he arrived in a residential building. And then flew up ... ".

While the festive Pasques Yuri Glodan was sold out along Odessa, he himself returned to an apartment that was no longer there.

“When Yura told my husband that there were no more than three of them, I said that this could not be true,” Alexander recalls. - How many floors we have, how many apartments we have, how many real estate objects in such a huge Odessa. Why did this happen there? ”

“Girls wanted to live so! Do you know these girls smiled at the eyes? Have you seen their photos? They were such laughter. They always found a reason to laugh, ”says the family of the family Glodan Alena.

According to BBC , the day after the tragedy, Yuri arrived in a destroyed apartment to pick up what survived: photo album, notes written by hand, collection of bags of sugar, which Valeria collected.

“The worst thing in this story is that the angel died,” says Alexandra Ilyashenko. - This is not just a child, this is an angel who was born, understand, before Christmas, January 4, and died on the eve of Easter. I bought Kirochka sliders, which I still have not presented, can you imagine? Because at first there was quarantine, and then the war simply began. That's all. "

Alexandra's voice breaks, she begins to cry, but continues: “I really want to convey the idea that it is very important not to go into anger, it is very important not to curse now, although I really want to. I really want to wish all the worst, but we know that now there is a struggle of darkness and light, and we believe that we are on the side of the world. In any case, this three -month -old child could not be on the other side. And Lera could not. I really want the thoughts that accompany these girls are also bright. I really want the eternal engine and drives that they had here to have them the same. It is impossible to get out of all this when you curse. Impossible. It is better to be in an absolute void. ”

Alexandra is not silent for long and then said: “We were taught that we need to be here and now, here and now. This is such a pop phrase, but I am so happy that we listened to her. We managed so much! We managed to try, traveling, doing incredible things and enjoy at least something in front of this nightmare that is happening now. ”