Erin Burnett Weeps While Interviewing Ukrainian Man Whose Wife and Children Were Killed: ‘Can You Tell Me About Them?’

CNN’s Erin Burnett wept on Wednesday as she interviewed a Ukrainian man whose wife and children were killed last week by a Russian mortar attack.

Serhiy Perebyinis found out his wife Titiana and children Mykta and Alisa were killed in Irpin on March 9 after he saw their bodies online. Photographer Lynsey Addario watched on as a mortar struck four civilians who had attempted to cross a bridge into Kyiv.

A man named Anatoly Berezhnyi died alongside Perebyinis’s family. Addario snapped a photo of their bodies and went viral.

Perebyinis told the New York Times he saw the image on Twitter and knew he had lost his family. He joined Burnett on OutFront Wednesday to expound on the experience.

“I’m so deeply sorry for your unbearable loss,” Burnett told Perebyinis, before she asked, “Have you been able to see Titiana and your children? Have you been able to bury them?”

“Yes, I’ve managed to bury everyone,” he responded. “I was driving for three days and I broke in there and managed to bury everyone. I even managed to take away a pet dog from there.”

Burnett asked Perebyinis to recount his final conversation with his wife.

The widower responded, via a translator, that his family was planing to leave Irpin on a convoy that was fired on. That is how they ended up on foot near the bridge where they died.

Burnett, becoming visibly more emotional, asked Perebyinis about Titiana. He explained they had a close relationship and an active lifestyle.

As the CNN host asked him his late children, she began to cry, and had to pause.

“Can you tell me about them?” she said through tears.

Burnett lost her composure as Perebyinis spoke about the moment he he recognized his family dead.

“We used to see each other with my wife on Google Maps, and that morning I noticed that there was 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,” he said. 

Burnett silently wept as Perebyinis continued:

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 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. 

Perebyinis, speaking to a shaken interviewer, concluded his daughter and son were “normal, cheerful children.”

He also vowed to remain in Ukraine “until the end.”

“Serhiy, thank you so, so much for speaking with me and for sharing this, such deeply personal loss,” Burnett concluded as she wiped away tears. “Thank you.”

Watch above, via CNN.