Editor's Note:
This report contains explicit content.
Lviv, Ukraine (CNN) --
Iryna Filkina had big plans for this year.
She was about to turn 53 in April and she wanted to focus on herself after spending the last three decades working tirelessly and raising her two daughters between the cities of Bucha and Irpin, in the suburbs of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. .
Filkina signed up for a cosmetics course in early 2022 with local makeup artist Anastasia Subacheva and picked up her first set of blush, eyeliner and foundation, which she planned to debut at an upcoming concert.
She even got a red manicure for Valentine's Day, with a drawing of "a heart on her finger because she had started to love herself," Subacheva told CNN.
But his plans came to a halt at the end of February, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Her daughters decided to cross the border into Poland, but Filkina stayed behind to help people.
She spent a week at the Epicenter shopping center in Bucha, feeding the people who took refuge there and cooking for the Ukrainian Army, according to her daughter.
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On March 5, Filkina tried to get out in one of the cars that were evacuating people from the mall but, finding no place, decided to cycle home.
One of Filkina's daughters, Olga Shchyruk, 26, said she begged her not to cycle home that day.
She asked him to leave town on the next train.
Iryna Filkina, putting on makeup.
"I told him it wasn't safe there. Russia had occupied the whole town, they killed people," Shchyruk told CNN.
"Olga, don't you know your mother? I can move mountains!" Filkina replied, according to Shchyruk, a child psychologist who was in Poland at the time, helping other Ukrainian refugees.
It was the last conversation they had.
Filkina never came home that day.
ANALYSIS |
Drones, phones and satellite technology expose the truth about Russia's war in Ukraine in near real time
A chilling recording shared this week appears to have captured the moment of Filkina's death.
A drone video taken before March 10 shows a person pushing a black bicycle towards Yablunska street in Bucha before being shot by Russian soldiers.
At least four detonations can be made out coming from a Russian military vehicle after the cyclist rounds the corner.
https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/cyclist-tank.mp4
A second video from the same street, posted on Twitter and geolocated by CNN, shows the body of a woman in a blue jacket and light-colored pants lying next to a black bicycle near a fallen utility pole.
One of her legs is shattered.
Her arm lies at her side.
Burnt out and abandoned cars lie on the street alongside ash and debris.
Other images from the scene, taken by Reuters, show a closer view of the woman in the blue jacket.
A curled-up hand peeks out of her sleeve, nails painted cherry red and a heart motif on one finger, standing out from the grime and grime.
When the image of that hand went viral on social media this week, both Shchyruk and Subacheva immediately recognized whose hand it was: Filkina.
"How could a person not recognize her mother's body?"
Shchyruk said.
Iryna Filkina's daughter and friend say that this photo helped identify her.
Subacheva began comparing the photos he took of Filkina with the Reuters photograph.
"This photo of her body and my own (photos) of her manicure... I realized it was the same person and I started to cry," Subacheva said, adding that the last time she saw her was a day before. the invasion began.
"We have to realize that behind this photo of her hand is a great woman."
Known as "Mama Ira" by all of her daughters' friends, people adored Filkina's propensity to care for those around her.
When Filkina saw the sea for the first time in her life two years ago on a family trip to Egypt, "everyone in the hotel fell in love with her. They said, 'Mama Ira, come back,'" Shchyruk says.
"All his life, he gave himself to others, he gave his life to other people's ambitions," Shchyruk said.
It was after that trip to Egypt that his mother decided that she "wanted to follow her own passions," he added.
Corpses of 'executed people' left lying in the streets of Bucha as Ukraine accuses Russia of war crimes
As a result, Shchyruk refused to believe that his mother was dead, despite the fact that the Ukrainian Army informed the family on March 5 that she had died.
The military said it would be impossible to recover his body, as a Russian tank was positioned nearby.
CNN has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.
Iryna Filkina, photographed during the holidays.
Shchyruk believed that his mother was only injured.
He spent the entire month of March asking bloggers and trying to contact neighbors, despite the power outage in Bucha, if they had heard anything.
"I figured that she was hiding in a basement, that she had seen the occupants and that she had stayed somewhere to wait," she told CNN, her voice breaking.
In reality, her mother was lying alone on Yablunska Street, where at least 20 other bodies of civilians killed during the month of Russian occupation of Bucha are found.
In April, street images that emerged after the hasty Russian withdrawal confirmed Shchyruk's worst fears.
"When I heard for the second time that my mother had been killed, I had the feeling that my spine had been broken. I lay down, crying helplessly," he said.
Shchyruk does not know when he will be able to see his mother's body.
Local officials have spent the last week cleaning up the dead and demining the town.
The mayor of Bucha estimates that as many as 300 people died under Russian occupation, where accounts of summary executions, brutality and indiscriminate bombing have sparked a global outcry and new sanctions against Moscow.
The United States imposes new sanctions against the daughters of Vladimir Putin and Russian banking institutions
Shchyruk said his mother would not want him to feel sorry for himself.
Channeling the spirit of his mother, he will create a foundation in Filkina's name to help young Ukrainians affected by the war.
"I want the image of his hand to be a symbol of new beginnings," he said.
"This symbol tells the occupants that they can do anything to us, but they can't take the main thing: love. Love for people, which they don't have."
-- CNN's Tara John reported and wrote from Lviv, Ukraine. Oleksandra Ochman reported from Lviv. Eoin McSweeney reported from Abu Dhabi and Gianluca Mezzofiore reported from London.