Ukraine war: 'Russian soldiers killed my family while they fled'

A family trying to flee Russian attacks was deliberately targeted by Russian soldiers at a checkpoint in southern Ukraine, relatives say. Five people were killed. This article contains details some readers may find upsetting.

On 24 February, as Russian forces launched their attack on Ukraine, the Fedko family made a desperate attempt to flee their city of Kherson, in the country's south, to join relatives in a village where they felt they would be safe.

Oleg, who is a police officer, had to stay as his department was on full war alert. His father came to take Irina, Oleg's wife, and the couple's two children, six-year-old Sofia and Ivan, who was not even two months old, to his house in Vesele.

Shortly after they arrived, Russian forces entered the village. The troops had come from Crimea, which Russia had invaded and annexed in 2014, and advanced quickly, facing little resistance.

Electricity and water supplies were cut off. Worried they would be caught up in the fighting, the family decided to flee, again, this time to the village of Nova Kakhovka, where other relatives lived.

They were now a bigger group, divided in two cars. One carried Oleg's aunt, uncle and cousins. In the second were his parents, wife and children. Their journey would see them driving along a dam, which was already under Russian control, to cross the Dnipro river, which cuts through Ukraine dividing the country in two.

The first car had passed through a checkpoint manned by Russian soldiers, but they had lost sight of the other vehicle.

Denis, Oleg's brother, was monitoring their moves by phone from Cherkasy, in central Ukraine. At 17:13, he called his mother. "I was trying to convince my mom not to go to Nova Kakhovka, not to stay in Vesele," he said. "I told them: 'Go to Odesa, I have a flat there for you'."

At that moment, he told me, he heard his mother scream: "Oh my God, it's a child, how can you do that". His sister-in-law, he said, was also screaming.

"Then I heard the sound of shooting," he said. "The car stopped and I heard the opened door beeping. I heard the baby cry. He cried, cried, cried. Then I heard [more] gunshots."

Denis was in shock. What had happened? What could he do?

His aunt, who was in the first car and also called Irina, was frantically trying to call her sister, Denis's mother. She was not answering. She tried others in the car. No-one was picking up the phone. Irina was in panic. They decided to return and check.

"Back at the checkpoint," she said, "we approached a soldier and asked about the car". The soldier, Irina told me, pointed at the ditch and said "the driver didn't obey orders and nearly ran over an officer".

Irina said she begged the soldiers to let her and Oleksandr, her husband, go to the car. "I said there were children there," she told me. Two soldiers went to the car. Oleksandr followed them. The car, he said, was pierced through with bullets. "The front, the back and both sides had bullet holes."

Ivan was pulled out by one of the soldiers. He was crying. "I told them [Sofia] was also there and ran towards the car. Sofia was in the back seat," Oleksandr said. "I looked at her and there was a hole in her chest". The three adults - Oleg's parents and his wife - had been killed.

Sofia was still alive. Ivan had now gone silent. Irina and Oleksandr brought the children to their car and rushed to a hospital in Nova Kakhovka.

But the doctors there could not save them.

Ivan, it turned out, had also been shot. "He was shot in the ear, and the bullet went through the back of his head. His face was clean but the back of his head was covered with blood. But he was still alive and crying," Oleksandr said.

"All that time the soldiers were nearby," he told me, "but they didn't even come to check on the people" in the car.

Irina is inconsolable. "I still can't believe that they're gone. I don't even understand that this happened to us," she said. "I cry all the time."

The Russian military only allowed the family to retrieve the bodies of the adults the following day. The doctor who inspected the bodies told them that they all died from multiple gunshot wounds.

The BBC has approached the Russian defence ministry for comment.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) said evidence was being collected on alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by Russia in Ukraine. And the UN Human Rights Council voted to establish a commission to investigate alleged human rights violations by Russia in the war.

Russian soldiers are now digging trenches and strengthening their positions in Nova Kakhovka and nearby villages. The local population live in constant fear. "I wasn't scared before," Irina said. "But I'm scared now."

"There were some Russian soldiers near a pharmacy today. They were checking people's phones and their pockets. And they pointed their guns at them. We got in the car and drove away," Irina said in tears.

Oleg continues with his work with the police department, despite the loss of his wife and children. "He's doing everything to protect our citizens," Denis said. "But his pain of failing to protect his own family while defending the nation is unimaginable."