SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — A Bay Area software company employee and her two children are dead after Russian soldiers fired on them while evacuating a Ukrainian city near Kyiv.
SE Ranking confirmed on Monday morning that Tatiana Perebeinis, the Palo Alto business and marketing software company's chief accountant, and her two children were killed Sunday when Russian "mortar artillery" fired on Irpin, Ukraine. Perebeinis and her children were trying to evacuate the city.
"There are no words to describe our grief or to mend our pain," the company wrote in a Facebook post. "But for us, it is crucial to not let Tania and her kids Alise and Nikita remain just statistics. Her family became the victim of the unprovoked fire on civilians, which under any law is a crime against humanity."
The company added that the Russian army "are criminals" who "should be stopped."
The New York Times reported from Irpin on Sunday that a woman, her teenage son and her daughter "who appeared to be about 8 years old" died after Russian soldiers fired mortars at a bridge civilians were using to flee the fighting near Kyiv. Soldiers tried helping an unconscious man traveling with the family, but the paper reported he died of his wounds.
About a dozen Ukrainian soldiers were helping carry children and escaping civilians' luggage, not fighting, according to the paper.
In addition to its Palo Alto offices, SE Ranking's website lists offices in London, Kyiv, Moscow, and Minsk, Belarus. Russia staged a number of its forces in Belarus before invading Ukraine. The company announced on March 1 it had ceased operations in Russia, no longer allowing Russian customers to sign up or pay for its service.
Of the company's 122 listed employees on LinkedIn as of Tuesday afternoon, 72 were based in Ukraine.
"Some of us have spent days on the road striving to bring our families to a safer place," Svetlana Shchehel, a content marketer and editor with the company, wrote in a blog post on March 1. "Some are still in Kyiv and other cities of Ukraine, trying to do their daily routine to the sounds of air raid sirens. All of us feel scared and devastated, but also hopeful and strong."
Follow KNX News 97.1 FM
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok
Related
