Iryna Filkina - an aspiring makeup artist and blogger who posted tutorials to her social media pages - was identified by a widely-shared photograph of just her hand.
Tragically, A Bucha Victim Identified By Her Unique Manicure
Credit: Twitter
April 7, 2022

When Iryna Filkina's body was discovered on a street in Bucha the photo of just her hand proved particularly gut-wrenching for another woman in a nearby city.

Source: New York Times

Among the distressing pictures of dead bodies in Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where Russian forces are accused of carrying out atrocities against Ukrainian citizens, one in particular stood out to Anastasiia Subacheva, a makeup artist from the nearby city of Gostomel.

In it she recognized a perfectly manicured hand with red and white nail polish — one that she had seen many times holding a brush or lipstick, or spreading foundation or eye shadow during her makeup lessons.

Now, it lay lifeless on a street, covered in dirt.

“When I saw it, I felt physically like my heart started to break,” Ms. Subacheva said in a telephone call on Wednesday from the city of Kropyvnytskyi, to which she had fled with her family.

Ms. Subacheva, who has been a makeup artist in Bucha for five years, said she knew a lot of women there because she did the makeup for many of them.

The pictured woman, Iryna Filkina, 52, a heating station operator, had reached out to Ms. Subacheva in February to inquire about makeup classes. She dreamed of becoming popular and increasing the number of her Instagram followers, the makeup artist recalled.

Apparently, the exact moment of her death was captured by drone footage. According to CNN,

Chilling footage shared this week appears to have captured the moment of Filkina's death. A drone video taken before March 10 showed a person pushing a black bicycle onto Yablunska Street in Bucha before being gunned down by Russian soldiers. At least four puffs of smoke emit from a Russian military vehicle after the cyclist rounds the corner.

A second video of the same street, posted to Twitter and geolocated by CNN, shows the body of a woman with a blue jacket and light-colored trousers sprawled alongside a black bike by an uprooted electricity pole. One leg is mangled. Her arm lies to the side. Burned-out and abandoned cars litter the street alongside ash and debris.

Further images of the scene, taken by Reuters, show a closer view of the woman in the blue jacket. A curled hand peeks out the sleeve, with cherry red nail polish, and a heart motif on one finger, shining through the grime and dirt.

Drone footage would later show the exact moment she died, a Russian tank killed her with artillery fire as she rode her black bicycle. The chilling video can be viewed on the CNN site.

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