A heartbroken mother fell to her knees and screamed after one of Vladimir Putin ’s rockets beheaded her only son.
Yana Kovaliova sobbed when she recalled the moment she discovered her 18-year-old son decapitated in the street, not far from his dying girlfriend.
Her only son had tragically died trying to protect his partner as another victim of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The brutal bloody attack took place in the village of Verkhniotoretske, which is near the eastern city of Donetsk.
The east of Ukraine has become the newest flashpoint in the ongoing war after Russia regrouped its forces to launch an assault on the Donbas to seize the region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the city as having been reduced to “hell”.
Yana told The Sun on Sunday : “I fell to my knees and screamed when I found him like that. I screamed, ‘My son, my son, my son!’
“Shrapnel had taken off his head as he bent down trying to shield his girlfriend from the blasts.
“I recognised the hooded top he was wearing and saw he had been reaching for his phone in the pocket when he was hit.”
She added that for three days she was unable to eat or stop crying as she mourned for her son.
Mark was walking to see his mum with his student teacher girlfriend, Katarina Sudaremko, also 18, having just left his grandmother’s house when the missile strike started on March 15.
The rocket attack saw Yana and her husband Anatoly dive to the floor as rockets landed in their neighbour's garden and along the street.
In the blood and chaos after the strike, they found Mark lying, crouched in a ball like he had been trying to shield Katarina.
A second strike forced Yana and Anatoly to run for cover and leave the couple's bodies behind as their house was destroyed.
Yana was forced to flee her home to south Ukraine along with tens of thousands of others fleeing Putin’s forces.
It comes as Ukraine ruled out a ceasefire or concessions to Moscow while Russia intensified an offensive in the eastern Donbas region.
