A 10-year-old Ukrainian boy has spoken out about Russian troops murdering both his parents in front of him after their arrival in the Chernihiv region in the first weeks of the war.
The boy, identified as Andrei Bliznyuk, spoke to the Ukrainian news outlet TSN about the family’s doomed escape from the village of Sofiivka in early March.
He said they were confronted by a column of Russian military vehicles as they tried to make their way out, and one of the armored personnel carriers deliberately crushed their vehicle.
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“Dad died first. Mom was still alive, but wounded,” the boy told the news outlet as he revisited the wreckage of the family’s car for the first time.
Russian troops yanked him out of the vehicle and tossed him on the road, he said, then they began firing at the family’s car as his parents were still inside, deliberately aiming for and striking the gas tank.
He focused on all the Russian military vehicles while the car went up in flames with his mother still alive inside, he said.
“I counted about 120,” he said. “At first there were tanks, armored personnel carriers, a lot of Grad [rocket launchers].”
He managed to get to safety after seeing people he knew from the village, who phoned his grandparents. According to them, he has barely been able to cry yet, TSN reported.
His mother, Oksana, was 46 and his father, Mikhail, was 52. Another relative who was in the vehicle, Sergei, was 33.
The boy’s story echoes that of many Ukrainians who managed to flee the arrival of Russian troops in their villages but said they witnessed Putin’s soldiers indiscriminately slaughtering civilians as they tried to evacuate. Ukrainian authorities have said they are compiling as much information as possible on all such accounts in order to bring war crimes charges against Russia.
