A death without meaning
How Iryna Filkina became a symbol of war
2/22/2023 4:54 p.m
Almost a year after the start of the war, the Bucha massacre is deeply engraved in the memory of the Ukrainian population. One of the dead, Iryna Filkina, became a symbol of the atrocities committed against civilians. Their fate burdens relatives to this day.
The photo of her hand, with bright red fingernails, went around the world. In April 2022, a journalist photographed the dead Iryna Filkina. It was on a street in Bucha. Her body, like many others, had simply been left by the Russian occupiers. A year after the invasion of Ukraine began, Iryna Filkina has become a symbol of the cruelty of war and the suffering of Ukrainian civilians. She was 52 years old.
“For me, the world stopped on March 5,” Svitlana Safonova, the sister of the dead, told the Reuters news agency almost a year later about the day on which Iryna Filkina was believed to have been shot. “If someone dies after a long illness and is buried, that’s one thing. It’s quite another if he’s suddenly murdered – and for absolutely no reason.”
In early April, shortly after the Russian troops withdrew from Bucha, Iryna Filkina was spotted. A whole street was littered with the bodies of killed civilians. Some of them were apparently executed outright. According to Safonova, her sister was shot while she was cycling home. In total, after the liberation of Bucha, Ukrainian troops discovered around 450 bodies, most of which showed signs of torture or a violent death.
It quickly became clear that these were war crimes. Investigators also secured evidence against the Russian troops with international help. To this day, Russia denies being responsible for the massacre. Poor-quality video clips were meant to suggest that the people lying on the street were just pretending to be dead. Reporters on the ground and satellite images have disproved that. And Butscha was not an isolated case. Mass graves were also discovered in Isjum in September, and the country was again in shock.
Iryna Filkina was buried on the outskirts of Bucha. Several cemeteries have been created there to bury the many dead. The 52-year-old’s body lay on the side of the road for about four weeks before it could be recovered. This is difficult for her family to bear. The fact that Iryna Filkina could be identified at all was due to her fingernails. The Ukrainian had her nails done by Anastasiia Subacheva just days before her death – and she shared a photo of the smiling customer on Instagram. Five nails painted red and a silver heart. Subacheva recognized her immediately.
Iryna Filkina’s two adult daughters, Nadia and Olga, only found out about their mother’s death on social media. They have since set up a foundation called “Mama Ira” and collect money for children who lost their parents in the war. Just like herself.