Portraits by Viktor Melamed

Marina Voropai, 34

Shot in the leg by Russian troops while being evacuated from Sievierodonetsk, she handed her two-year-old child to passers-by and bled to death by the side of the road.

Anna Olina, 28

Killed together with her husband in the basement of their home during the Russian bombardment of Mariupol.

Alexander Bezobrazov, 70

Trauma surgeon who had led clean-up operations at Chernobyl. Killed in Mariupol by Russian troops.

Yuriy Kerpatenko, 46

Composer, principal conductor of the Kherson Music and Drama Theatre and of the Gileya Orchestra. After he refused to collaborate with the occupation authorities, in particular to organise a concert meant to show off Kherson’s rich cultural life and well-being, he was killed in his own home, shot through the door with machine-gun fire.

Anton Kushnir, 48

Owner of a car dealership. A citizen of the Russian Federation, he had lived in Ukraine since 1999. In his last months he drove dozens of people from Kherson to Mykolaiv and brought back humanitarian aid from the regional volunteer warehouse. Killed by a Russian sniper while leaving Kherson; his car was the first in the convoy.

Anastasia Mostova, 17

Musician, bandura player, singer. Shot dead in the street in the first days of the Russian occupation of Kherson. The exact circumstances of her death are unknown; her body was found not far from the car in which two of her friends, Vadik and Nastya, were also killed.

Oleksiy Klymenko, 83

Worked as a mechanic before retiring. He drowned together with his wife Maria near their home when the town of Hola Prystan was flooded after Russian troops blew up the Kakhovka dam. A neighbour who managed to climb onto the roof saw them drowning and calling for help, but could do nothing.

Natalia Darmobid, 34

Killed by drunk Russian soldiers together with her husband Alexander and their two young children in Kamysh-Zorya, near Zaporizhzhia, after Alexander had tried to protect her from their harassment.

Tetiana Kapkanets, 51

Worked on the family farm. Killed together with her husband Eduard, her son Andriy, his wife Natalia, their two children, Nastya, 9, and Nikita, 5, and three other relatives who lived with them in the same house, after a quarrel between Andriy and Russian soldiers. They were all shot at night with automatic weapons as they slept in their beds. The killers wore night-vision goggles.

Svitlana Lanevych, 50

Deputy head of the village of Vysokopillia, in the Kherson region. Russian soldiers, apparently drunk, entered her home and, after a short conversation, killed Svitlana and her husband Serhiy in front of her mother.

Olga Kurierova, 52

Businesswoman. During the war she volunteered, delivering food to people hiding in basements and to Ukrainian troops. She died shielding a colleague from shrapnel with her own body during the Russian shelling of Novodruzhesk, in the Luhansk region.

Valentina Korneeva, 73

Worked as an engineer before retiring. She died in occupied Hola Prystan from complications of diabetes, unable to obtain the medicines she needed. She could not walk and had open ulcers on her legs. Her children and grandchildren could not reach her in the occupied territory. Valentina’s husband, Anatoliy Korneev, 79, drowned in the flood that hit the town after Russian troops blew up the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant.

Anastasia Saksaganska, 25

Nurse anaesthetist at a maternity hospital in Kherson. Seized by Russian soldiers together with her husband Valeriy at their home in Mali Kopani, near Kherson, in front of their three-year-old daughter Margarita. Both were shot in a nearby forest for refusing to take Russian passports.

Dmytro Shuvalov, 17

He had cerebral palsy. After both his parents, Serhiy and Natalia Shuvalov, were killed by a Russian sniper, which neither the neighbours nor the relatives knew, Dmytro was left alone and died of hunger, cold and lack of medical care. No one knows how long he lived alone.

Anthony “Tonko” Ignat

Canadian volunteer with the non-governmental organisation “Road to Relief”, which helps civilians in wartime. A civilian car carrying volunteers was hit by Russian troops; an anti-tank round overturned the car and set it on fire. The organisation’s director, Emma Igual, was killed along with Anthony, and two other volunteers were seriously injured.

Ihor Kozlovsky, 69

Religious scholar, philosopher, teacher, head of the department of religious studies at the Donetsk Institute of Informatics and Artificial Intelligence. After the coup in Donetsk he stayed in the city to keep teaching. In 2016 the security forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic seized him and held him in prison for 23 months, beating and torturing him. He was released in a prisoner exchange. He lived in Kyiv, where he worked at the Institute of Philosophy. He died of a heart attack during the Russian bombardment of Kyiv.

Vanda Obiedkova, 91

She survived the German occupation of Mariupol, when her mother was killed along with 16,000 other Jews. She died of starvation in a basement in Mariupol.

Liubov Kutniakh, 27

Pastry chef. Killed together with her mother and younger brother while trying to leave the occupied village of Tamarino. Their convoy of cars came under fire from the Russian army.

Yana Mikhidenko, 33

Pastry chef. She had volunteered to meet refugees at a destroyed bridge outside Hostomel on the day the Russian army had announced a “green corridor”. Killed by two shots fired by a sniper through the windscreen.

Ihor Denchik, 15

Schoolboy. Killed in the occupied town of Vorzel, near Kyiv. Russian soldiers threw a smoke grenade into the basement where Ihor’s family had taken shelter from the shooting; when the people came out, they were ordered to lie on the ground and the soldiers opened fire. A neighbour, Liudmyla Shabanova, 58, died the next day; her husband was shot in the back. Ihor was hit in the neck. The soldiers did not allow his body to be taken away for four days.

Valeriy Surzhko, 38

Ran a small goat-cheese farm near Mariupol with his wife Svitlana. Tortured to death in his flat by a Russian soldier who questioned him about a neighbour who had served in the Ukrainian army. With a crushed chest and injuries to her fingers and legs, Svitlana managed to recover his body and bury it near their home, in the kindergarten yard, but she never recovered from the wounds inflicted on her during the interrogation and torture, and died in hospital.

Tetiana Zadorozhniak, 38

Sold suspended ceilings and organised children’s parties in the Makariv district near Kyiv. She was stabbed to death by a Russian soldier who had raped her for several days before the murder. According to Tetiana’s neighbours, the man was later killed by other Russians.

Tetiana Mudrenko, 56

Nurse. After all protests in occupied Skadovsk, in the Kherson region, had been crushed, she defiantly rode around the town with a Ukrainian flag on her bicycle. After a quarrel with the pro-Russian police she was taken from her home together with her husband. He was later released. Tetiana was hanged in front of the courthouse in the town centre.

Oleksandr Prokopchuk, 19

Seized by Russian troops in a garage near Nova Kakhovka, taken into the forest and shot together with his father Anatoliy.