The life of 62-year-old Mariia Dubovyk was taken by a Russian strike on Kramatorsk on April 8, 2022. The enemy hit the city’s railway station with a missile. Sixty-one people were killed.
Mariia was born in the village of Ust-Putyla in the Chernivtsi region. As a child, she moved with her parents to the Kharkiv region, where her mother was from. By profession, she was a crane operator. She worked on a farm and later as a senior laboratory assistant at the Kupiansk sugar plant.
Mariia lived in the village of Pisky-Radkivski in the Izium district. In early April 2022, fighting began on the outskirts of the village. Mariia hoped for the best and did not want to evacuate until the very last moment.
“On April 7, my mother decided to leave together with a good friend of hers. They were supposed to take an evacuation train from Kramatorsk,” her daughter Tetiana recalled. “On the morning of April 8, she called me. She said she was already waiting at the station in Kramatorsk. She was pleased that she had found the courage to leave. While we were talking, I heard an explosion through the phone. And the last ‘ah’ from my mother — a piece of shrapnel struck her. Then I heard people screaming. I kept shouting for a long time: ‘Mom, Mom, hello!’ But she did not answer.”
Russian forces attacked the railway station in Kramatorsk with a Tochka-U missile armed with cluster munitions. One hundred twenty-one people were injured, sixty-one were killed.
Mariia Dubovyk’s body was taken to the city of Dnipro. From there, her eldest daughter retrieved it and managed to bury her in Pisky-Radkivski — the same evening, the village was occupied.
“Mom was very kind. She knew how to comfort like no one else — without any reproach, very gently. She had tired eyes and always smiled. Mom loved to sing. She was a member of the local folk ensemble. They not only sang traditional songs but also recreated old local rituals — weddings and christenings,” Tetiana recalled.
Mariia Dubovyk is survived by three daughters, five grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, a sister, and a brother.
At 9:00 a.m. — the nationwide minute of silence. Donetsk Regional Military Administration and the Memorial platform: Killed by Russia commemorate the residents of Donetsk region killed by Russia.