'Destroyed a whole family': Kyiv teens mourn friend killed in Russian strike

At Kyiv's towering crematorium, baby-faced teenagers wept over the coffin of their friend, a 17-year-old killed with his parents by a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian capital last week.

Danylo Khudia, his mother Viktoria and his father Oleg were among 12 people killed when a ballistic missile ripped into a Kyiv residential area at dawn.

The family's only surviving member, 14-year-old Yanina -- Danylo's younger sister is still in the hospital.

A portrait of the youthful-looking, brown-haired Danylo was rested by his coffin, where his friends cried over it, caressing the photograph.

Danylo had one semester left before finishing school.

Instead, his teacher, Dmytro Shevchenko, was at his funeral.

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"This missile destroyed the life of a whole family," he told AFP outside the crematorium.

According to Shevchenko, Danylo's father was a military man serving in eastern Ukraine.

Instead of dying in battle, he was killed in his home in the capital in one of the deadliest attacks on the city during Moscow's more than three-year invasion.

Shevchenko said he would brief the man on his son's education by phone while he was away at the front.

"He was a very respectable man. I only spoke to his father on the phone because he was over there (in the east). All the questions about Danylo's education were dealt with like that," he said, calling the teenager a "good pupil."

Inside the Soviet-era crematorium, one elderly woman wept as a man pushed her wheelchair by the three coffins.

"They are gone... They are just gone," she sobbed, raising her arms to the air in despair.

'Good people'

Rescuers had worked through the rubble for hours to look for survivors after the strike hit on April 24.

Yulia Fedyuk, whose daughter knew Danylo, said the boy's friends flocked to the house, hoping he would be found alive.

"All the children who knew Danya, probably even those who did not know Danya, were all waiting outside the house," the 49-year-old, who works as a researcher in a physics institute, told AFP.

The building was cordoned off and the teens were "of course not allowed in" but they "waited for people to be gradually pulled out from under the ruins".

Eventually, she got a phone call from her 15-year-old daughter Katya.

"She called me and said: 'Mummy, Danya is gone'", she said, using the affectionate version of his name.

"It's hard for us, but its even harder for the children," Fedyuk added.

Valeria Yakuba had grown up with Danylo and lived in the neighbourhood.

"They were very good people. I know them all, we all grew up together," the 22-year-old said, adding that she had nothing but hate left for Russia.

"I don't want to see them (Russians) or hear anything about them," she said.

Western countries have slammed Moscow for the Kyiv strike, which hit the capital after a series of deadly attacks on civilian areas in other cities.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had announced a three-day ceasefire for May -- timed for when Russia celebrates the victory over the Nazis -- on Monday.

But at Danylo Khudia's funeral, nobody trusted that the Russian leader wanted to end attacks.

"He's ready for war. He doesn't want a ceasefire," the boy's teacher said.