Heartbreaking photos, posts by Ukrainian mom before she was killed with 3-month-old
A young Ukrainian mom who was killed along with her 3-month-old daughter in a Russian bombing had posted now-heartbreaking online photos and captions describing her pure joy at being a mother.
“It has been the best 40 weeks. Our little girl is already a month old,” wrote tragic Valerie Glodan on Instagram on Feb. 5 next to a photo of her pregnant and gazing lovingly at her belly.
“Daddy gave her the first flowers. This is a new level of happy,” the new mom added — about two and a half months before she and her baby were killed Saturday in an airstrike in Odessa, according to the Kyiv Independent.
A particularly grim-faced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky started his video address Saturday decrying the infant’s murder.
“Among those killed was a 3-month-old baby girl. How did she threaten Russia? It seems that killing children is just a new national idea of the Russian Federation,” he said. “They are just bastards. … I don’t have any other words for it, just bastards.”
Glodan’s widower, a baker, later posted heart-wrenching photos on Instagram of his late wife and child, where the new mom is seen feeding her baby.
“My dear ones, the kingdom of heaven. You are in our hearts,” the post in Ukrainian and translated to English says. His post included a picture of him holding his little girl.
Glodan was from the seaside city of Odessa and made her emotional posts right before the start of the war. She included pictures of what appeared to be her gender reveal, where she and the baby’s father held pinkish red smoke bombs to signify they were having a girl.
The mom and child were among at least eight Ukrainians killed in Saturday’s attack, which struck residential buildings, said Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, who added that more deaths are likely.
“Nothing is sacred,” Yermak wrote on Telegram of the missile strike, which came during the Eastern Orthodox observation of Holy Saturday. “The evil will be punished.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted Saturday, ”The only aim of Russian missile strikes on Odessa is terror.
“Russia must be designated a state sponsor of terrorism. … We need a wall between civilization and barbarians striking peaceful cities with missiles.”
Russia’s Ministry of Defense admitted to conducting air strikes in the Odessa area on Saturday but said it intended to target a logistics base at a nearby Ukrainian military airfield.