As soon as she saw the photo, Ksenia Khirvonina recognized her friend.
Khirvonina and her coworkers at the internet company had gathered in the mountains for a retreat a few days before, and Khirvonina's colleague had worn the same light pink parka.
The mother and her two children were killed by Russian shelling as they tried to escape. The New York Times published a photo of their deaths.
Russian mortars killed a mother and her two children and wounded a volunteer who was helping them flee. The family had been in the basement of their apartment building for days and were trying to escape as Russian soldiers bombarded their neighborhood. They never made it.
The image of the family fell in the middle of the street with their luggage strewn around them, as a symbol of the horror taking place in Ukraine. According to the United Nations, at least 691 Ukrainian civilians have been killed as of March 15, but The New York Times believes that number could be much higher. In the western city of Lyiv, there were empty strollers and car seats in front of the city hall to remember the children who have died in the conflict.
The tragedy has struck a nerve in many people, as details about her life and her tech startup job emerged in the days after her death. The woman lying by the sidewalk was not an anonymous victim in a distant, war-torn land, she was an employee at a startup that looked remarkably similar to tech firms everywhere, with the same work meetings, office routines and corporate retreats familiar to all startup employees.
She deserves more than to be known as the body in the street, killed by Putin's mortars. The loss of a fellow tech worker was decried by others on social media.
SE Ranking is a 9-year-old startup that helps websites manage their presence and rankings within online search results. For the past six years, she has worked at the office in Kyiv, and she has delighted her colleagues with her adventurous spirit, sense of humor, and updates about her children's latest achievements.
Her story over those years reflects both the chaos and uncertainty that has riven Ukraine since Russia's annexation of Crimea, and the extent to which the forces of globalized internet commerce can provide a veneer of normalcy even during the most turbulent times.
Alex Iskold, a Ukrainian-born venture capital investor in New York, told Insider that his inbox is full of messages from startup founders in Ukraine and venture capitalists with ties to the country. The tech community in the US and Europe has responded to the invasion with a truly unprecedented display of unity and solidarity.
Iskold called her death "so graphic, so meaningless, so hurt" while he didn't know her.
There are moments in this war that drive things home even harder and this was one of them.
The suddenness of her death was hard for those who worked with her.
Scott Irwin, the co-owner of San Francisco-based financial firm Camber Partners, said in a post on Linkedin that he collaborated with Tania as recently as last Friday.
The firm invested in SE Ranking last year. The amount of investment that Camber Partners has made has not been revealed, though he told TechCrunch in December that the typical investment is between $10 million and $25 million.
The most significant link to Silicon Valley appears to have been the investment by the Camber Partners.
According to their LinkedIn profiles, most of the employees of SE Ranking are based in the Eastern European countries of Ukraine or Belarus. The main London address is a mail forwarding address and the office building in Palo Alto has no listing for SE Ranking in its directory.
Khirvonina, the head of public relations for SE Ranking, said that the company has investors and partners in the US, but that she could not reveal their names.
After joining SE Ranking in 2016 he rose through the ranks and eventually became the company's chief financial officer.
She and her husband, Serhiy, moved to Kyiv after fleeing the uprising in eastern Ukraine. They bought an apartment in Irpin, a community just outside of Kyiv, hoping it would be their home for many years to come.
Khirvonina described Perebeinis as bright, always smiling, almost always in a good mood, and always willing to help out her colleagues, even with their personal finances.
She was a big sister to a lot of us.
The whole office became invested in the process when Mykyta was applying to colleges, offering advice on his exams and which university he should attend.
Many of the employees of SE Ranking fled to other countries in the build-up to the invasion of Ukraine.
According to Khirvonina, who spoke to Insider from Dubai, the man was still in Irpin as Russian tanks rolled down the street. According to The New York Times, she stayed back because she was concerned about her mother, who has Alzheimer's disease, and because she didn't want to leave her son for military service.
According to The Times, another SE Ranking employee, Anastasia Avetysian, said that Perebeinis had been instrumental in distributing emergency funds to employees to help them evacuate, and that her sense of humor was intact even as she hid in her basement.
Avetysian told The Times that the company would need to do a special operation to get them out, like Saving Private Ryan.
SE Ranking had been keeping a record of employees and their locations on a spreadsheet and was aware that the family was hoping to flee on March 6.
On that day, Khirvonina was watching an employee channel on Telegram when she saw that Russian soldiers were firing on the same corridor.
She said that she was praying that it was not them.
The company's HR manager called her many times but she didn't pick up. She confirmed that the four people had been killed. Soon after, the photos appeared online.
She did nothing wrong and was an innocent person. She wasn't carrying any weapons. Khirvonina said that she was not saying anything bad to the Russian soldiers.
Russia has intensified its attacks on cities in Ukraine since the death of Perebeinis and her family.
The $1K Project is a fund launched by Iskold that is giving money to families impacted by the war. Iskold, who lived in Ukraine until he was 19, said this needs to stop.
Many employees and executives at tech companies with ties to the country are taking action. The San Francisco software startup that was founded in Ukraine is donating $5 million to organizations supporting people there, while employees have shared photos of friends and family homes in ruins.
According to Insider, the ride-sharing app is giving financial support and extra time off for those who want to temporarily relocate.
The loss of her colleague is part of a larger tragedy that is still difficult to comprehend.
It was difficult because it was a person you knew and a person you just talked to.
If they were running so fast, or if they were not running so fast, or if they were taking some other side of the street, what could have happened? Maybe it could be avoided.
Additional reporting was done by Shona Ghosh.
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