CNN Anchor Breaks Down Interviewing Ukrainian Man Who Learned His Wife & Kids Were Killed After Seeing Photo On Twitter

Trigger Warning: This article contains graphic details that maybe distressing to readers.

A recent interview with a Ukrainian man who lost his wife and children is so devastating to hear that even CNN Out Front anchor Erin Burnett lost her composure.

The mother-of-three broke down while interviewing Serhiy Perebyinis, a Ukrainian man who discovered his wife and children had been killed when he saw a photo of their bodies in a story online that had been published in the New York Times, reports Deadline. Images captured by New York Times journalists showed the bodies of Serhiy Perebyinis' wife Tatiana, 18-year-old son, Mykyta, and nine-year-old daughter, Alisa and Anatoly Berezhnyi, a church volunteer who was helping the family evacuate, according to Yahoo News. Perebyinis explained that he knew something was wrong when he saw the location of his wife’s phone.

He noticed his wife’s phone’s geolocation had moved from Irpin to a hospital in Kyiv. Later, he saw on Twitter that a family had died in the mortar shelling and the people in the photograph were unmistakable. “Serhiy, as a parent, any person around the world can’t imagine your unbearable loss, above all losing your children.” “Could you tell me about them?” Burnett said through tears. “We used to see each other with my wife on Google Maps, and that morning I noticed that there was an unusual geolocation between Kyiv and their ping and then, 20 minutes later, her phone moved to another location, to a hospital in Kyiv and I suspected something was wrong,” said Perebyinis.

“And I asked friends to come to the hospital and find out whether there were any bad news, and then Twitter, there was news on Twitter…there was mortar shelling and that a family died: two children, their mother and their father. And then I saw a photo on Twitter and I recognized my children. I recognized their things and their clothes. And I called my friends to say, ‘The children are dead. Their bodies are lying on pavement,’ and I asked them, ‘Please could you help me to find my wife.’" 

His wife was the chief accountant for a software company with offices in London and Silicon Valley and the couple had been married 23 years. “She was a very cheerful person,” he recalled. “She was the financial director of a large American company. We spent lots of time together as family. We laughed, [rode] bicycles. In winter, we went skiing. ... She loved very much planting flowers.”

Burnett couldn't hold her emotions anymore. With tears streaming down her face she asked Perebyinis again for a specific remembrance of his children. “If anyone watching could learn something about Alyssa and the kids, what would you want them to know?” she said. “They were normal children,” he told her. “My son was older. He was 18 and he was in second year of university. He wanted to become an IT professional. Started programming. And my daughter was nine years old and she liked dancing, painting. She studied English. They were normal, cheerful children.” Perebyinis told The New York Times that he felt it was important that the deaths of his loved ones were recorded on camera. “The whole world should know what is happening here.”

References:

https://news.yahoo.com/cnn-host-cries-she-interviews-040603126.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/world/europe/ukraine-family-perebyinis-kyiv.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/world/europe/ukrainian-family-killed-war.html

https://deadline.com/2022/03/erin-burnett-cry-ukraine-interview-1234980815/

https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1504260244574294016

Cover Image Source: Twitter/CNN