Thursday, 23 February 2023, 01:51–world history and facts
Her name was Iryna Filkina. She was a 52-year-old HVAC operator for a shopping mall in Bucha. In life she was just another ordinary person doing her best to make a modest living. In death she became symbolic of her nation's suffering.
We've all seen the photo of her hand. The freshly varnished nails broken and caked with mud. It was her nails that helped identify Iryna. She had left her beautician's shop in a nearby village and was returning home on her bicycle when she rounded a corner in Bucha to be confronted by several Russian tanks. The lead tank opened up on Iryna with its NSV 12.7 mm heavy machine gun.
When journalists were finally able to enter Bucha several days later they found Iryna's decomposing body next to her bicycle. Her purse and any identifying documents were missing from her person. One of the journalists was struck by the attention to detail of her nails. Four were painted red, a fifth pink with a small purple heart at its center outlined in silver. The journalist snapped a photograph of the hand with its brightly painted nails. Within a matter of hours the picture began appearing on the front page of media outlets around the world.
Anastasia Subacheva had been Iryna Filkina's beautician for several years. She fled Russia's murderous onslaught of Bucha and now lives in Vilnius. In April of last year, ten weeks after Iryna's murder, Anastasia was browsing through social media posts for news of the war. She came full stop at a photo of a lifeless hand with colorful nails.
“I immediately knew it was Iryna. I had done her nails. I started screaming. I couldn't stop. I cried on my mother's shoulder, I felt very empty and hurt."
Iryna Filkina was murdered on Yablunska Street, a now infamous thoroughfare on the southern edge of Bucha. Four hundred bodies of murdered civilians were found on Yablunska, some executed with hands tied behind their backs. Several now rest in graves marked Unknown.
But for her pretty nails, Iryna Filkina might have suffered the same fate.
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