The story of little Liza, killed in her stroller by a Russian missile

What Iryna Dmytrieva remembers, reliving the horror of that July morning in her first interview since leaving the hospital, is a deafening noise overhead that she thought was a plane. She looked up to see a “massive” missile and immediately crouched down to try to shield her child.

“There wasn’t time to do anything,” Iryna told The Washington Post. “It was over in a flash.”

As her injuries slowly heal, she keeps replaying those final moments with Liza. The two were going from one appointment to another, and Iryna is thankful she had securely strapped her daughter into the stroller at that point because they were rushing. Otherwise, she says, “who knows where she would have ended up?”

Her decision meant the family had an intact body they could grieve and bury — unlike the many other bodies blown apart that day.

“She was my life,” Iryna said of Liza. “What Russia took from me cannot be forgiven. All my plans are destroyed.”