They Escaped War in Ukraine. It Found Them in Israel.

For this Ukrainian family, Israel meant rescue from war.

To Mariia Pieshkurova, it was where her 7-year-old daughter, Anastasiia, could get lifesaving treatment for advanced leukemia, care hard to find during the war in Ukraine. To Anastasiia’s young cousins, Kostiantyn and Illia, Israel offered a refuge from the Russian drones and missiles that pounded Ukraine nightly.

So the family — Mariia, the three children and their grandmother — had settled in Bat Yam, a suburb of Tel Aviv.

In the end, war caught up with them.

On June 15, an Iranian missile strike on a residential building in Bat Yam killed all five family members, as Israel and Iran engaged in escalating air assaults. The news reverberated through Ukraine, stirring grief and outrage.

The deaths are an intersection, in human terms, of two wars until now connected mostly by geopolitics and arms deals. Iran was a key supplier of attack drones to Russia in the first year of its Ukraine invasion, and Moscow has long backed Tehran’s regime.

Beyond geopolitics, the deaths carried a cruel irony. The family was killed by war in the very country they believed would shield them from it, with its powerful air defense system that Ukraine has long envied.

“I really thought they’d be safe,” said Artem Buryk, Anastasiia’s father and Maria’s ex-partner. “I never thought they’d go to Israel to escape war — and find it there.”