Family and colleagues mourn beloved Kyiv teacher killed in a Russian strike

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Natalia Haiova was a beloved kindergarten teacher in Kyiv known for the artistic flair of her creations — drawings, flower arrangements, decorations.

Last week, she perished in a Russian strike on a nine-story building in the Svyatoshinsky district of the capital. The attack, which targeted multiple neighborhoods in Kyiv, claimed the lives of 31 people, including five children, making it the deadliest to hit the capital since the full-scale invasion.

Haiova, 46, was killed along with her sons, Vladyslav, 21, and Roman, 17, and her brother Oleksandr Naralyk, 44. The family was crushed under rubble when their apartment building collapsed over their heads.

On Tuesday, Haiova’s friends and family came to pay their last respects before she and her sons and brother were laid to rest in a Kyiv cemetery.

Nadia Kolisnyk, 56, the headmaster of the school where she worked, said that everyone would remember Haiova as a helpful and knowledgeable professional, as well as a creative spirit.

“You saw the beauty she created. All the flowers, the decorations — it was all her golden hands,” Kolisnyk said.

Arthur Kulishenko, 22, a classmate of Vladyslav’s, had gone to the scene of the attack and waited for his friend’s remains to be found, he said.

“We knew he was under the rubble and just waited,” he said. “There were just rocks. The building just crumbled there. It collapsed like a sliced cake.”

Haiova had moved during the pandemic to the house which had belonged to her father. She found a job right away in the nearby kindergarten, said her sister Olena Stetsiuk, 46.

When mass drone and missile attacks escalated on the capital in June, Stetsiuk, who lives in a different part of Kyiv, would message her sister and ask her how she was. Haiova would often respond that she was too tired to head to the basement to take shelter. But recent attacks had been so loud and scary she had usually made the decision to go.

Stetsiuk remembers the last shopping trip she made with her sister. They needed to find black garments for a friend’s funeral.

“We chose, walked around, laughed,” she said. “And we chose this blouse with her. She said, take this one. And we went to my place. We sat, discussed it, and looked some more.”

Stetsiuk wore the same blouse to her sister’s funeral two weeks later.