Yuri Glodan, a soldier from Odessa, has died at the front. He joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces after his wife and daughter were killed in a Russian missile attack in April 2022. Their story is that of a family completely erased by war.
Eight people died in that attack last year, in which Glodan narrowly escaped. He had just left home to go shopping when he heard the news of the explosion. He ran back and found his building on fire. When he arrived at her apartment, he found the bodies of her wife and her mother, who had been killed by a Russian missile that had torn apart the lower floors of the block. He later found the body of his daughter.
Kyra, three months old; her mother, Valeria, and grandmother Lyudmila: three lives from three generations erased in a moment by Russian imperialism. A year and a half later, the man who tried to avenge them and put an end to the occupation war has also died.
Yuri Glodan first fought in the Azov ranks, and then in the 3rd assault brigade. “Every resident of Odessa knows this family”explains in the Ukrainian media Page Alexander Yakovenko, co-owner of the Make My Cake project, in which Glodan worked as a baker.
Glodan’s words on the BBC were an exponent a year and a half ago of the horror that Russia has caused in Ukraine. “The whole world just died before my eyes, assassinated by a Russian missile”. About her wife he said that “I simply can’t find another person like her. God can only give it once.” Regarding his daughter, he remembered “crying with happiness” when she was born – at the end of January, just a month before the start of the war – “and now it is very difficult for me to realize that my daughter is no longer here.”