The mother seen in a viral photograph showing her dead body and the corpses of her children lying in a street in Ukraine has been identified as an employee of a Silicon Valley company.
Tatiana Perebeinis, who was killed alongside her 9-year-old daughter, Alise, and her 18-year-old son, Nikita, as they tried to escape the Russian invasion in the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, was the chief accountant for SE Ranking, a search engine optimization company based in Palo Alto, California.
“We are devastated to say that yesterday our dear colleague and friend Tatiana Perebeinis, the chief accountant of SE Ranking, was killed together with her two kids by russian mortar artillery,” the company said on social media Monday. “There are no words to describe our grief or to mend our pain. But for us, it is crucial to not let Tania and her kids Alise and Nikita remain just statistics. Her family became the victim of the unprovoked fire on civilians, which under any law is a crime against humanity. … Our hearts are broken. Our prayers are for all Ukrainians, who are fighting for their right to exist.”
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Perebeinis worked at SE Ranking’s Kyiv office.
SE Ranking spokeswoman Ksenia Khirvonina told the San Francisco Chronicle that Perebeinis initially did not intend to flee the country, partly because she did not want to leave her son, who would not be allowed to leave the country if called to help defend Ukraine, and partly because her mother was sick. But when the Russians began attacking the city and their apartment was hit by a bomb, Perebeinis, relying on Russia’s promise of safe passage for civilians leaving the country, decided to flee. “But then Russian troops started firing on innocent civilians, and that’s how they got killed,” Khirvonina said.
The image of their dead bodies, which showed their backpacks, luggage, and animal carrier, was featured on the front page of the New York Times last week and sparked global outrage. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to make Russia pay for civilian deaths.
“There will be no quiet place on Earth for you,” Zelensky warned Russia. “Except for the grave.”
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Perebeinis’s husband, Sergii, was not with the family at the time of the attack. He has traveled to Kyiv with the help of the firm to organize a funeral, according to Khirvonina.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began Feb. 24 and is stretching into its second week. The fighting has resulted in the deaths of an estimated 500 civilians. More than 2 million people have fled the country.
