The hand on the floor in the middle of the dust and the nails with red nail polish. The photo, taken by photographer Reuters in Bucha, Ukraine, went around the world and became a symbol of horror. Because these red nails tell a story, the story of a woman who dreamed of becoming a makeup artist and instead found her death 15 minutes from her home, returning from work on a bicycle that was hit by fire from the Russian occupiers became.
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Iryna Filkina who was Bucha’s wife with red nail polish
This woman is Iryna Filkina, 52 years old, worker in a central heating system. Iryna wanted to change her life, she dreamed of becoming a makeup artist: for this reason, in February, just before the outbreak of war, she enrolled in a cosmetology course. The teacher, Anastasiia Subacheva, recognized this hand.
“My heart broke when I saw the photo,” said the woman, who worked in Bucha for 5 years and met many of the city’s girls and women. Iryna had an Instagram channel where she shared makeup tutorials, dreamed of growing her followers and getting better at her passion. Subacheva recalled that during the lesson he entrusted to her that he was eagerly waiting for the concert of Ukrainian pop singer Olya Polyakova, he would talk to her about what she would wear and how she would do makeup for the event.
Iryna’s daughter: “She was found on her birthday”
Ms. Filkina’s daughter, Olha Shchyruk, fled Bucha shortly after the war began. On March 6, she received news that her mother had been shot while riding her bike home from work. Nevertheless, he hoped for days that she was still alive. Then she was sent a video showing the body on the ground: “I would have recognized her even without the red nails,” said the daughter.
“Today is exactly one month since her death. And all I can do is cry, sometimes even that doesn’t work,” Olha wrote in a lengthy Instagram post in memory of her mother that was published on April 5. Some people even doubt that this is real. For me, this is a living image that keeps popping up in my head. The war has not only come to my country. She came to my house and took, she stole… my universe.”
Olga goes on to say that her mother was found on her birthday, but she can’t bury her body yet because the Ukrainian authorities have taken her away along with many other bodies to establish the causes of death and investigate Russian crimes.