Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, emotional images have been spreading on social media that show the very personal suffering of the war: destroyed houses, apartments, grieving parents, funerals.
Again and again, grieving children can be seen at their parents’ graves. They are perhaps the saddest images that war produces.
A particularly heartbreaking picture has now been shared and commented on thousands of times on social networks: on her first birthday, a little girl is sitting between a breakfast she has brought with her at the grave of her father, the soldier Vladislav Soldierov, who died in the war.
The girl is wearing a pink dress in front of him is a posed picture of his dad. The portrait stands in front of the tomb in a blue and yellow frame.
The picture was probably first posted by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense on Facebook and the girl’s mother was quoted in the post: “We brought you breakfast,” she says, addressing the deceased father of her child.
So the daughter could spend her first birthday with her father. The pain of loss is beyond words. “My heart is breaking,” she quotes the Department of Defense. The soldier’s death must not be forgotten.
The Ministry of Defense probably wants to use the photo to boost the morale of its own troops and to pledge the Ukrainians to war against Russia.
The photo was shared on Twitter by users who want to draw attention to the horrors of war in general.
