LVIV, Ukraine — On the morning of his youngest daughter’s birthday, Yaroslav Bazylevych woke up, again, to a nightmare.

Planning ahead for the day, his wife had known that she would be away in Paris, so she’d put their older daughters, Yaryna and Daria, in charge — they’d make the occasion feel special. Meanwhile, Yaroslav had been mulling whether Emilia, the birthday girl, was old enough for the cellphone she wanted as a gift.

But there would be no cake, no celebration, no phone. Instead, Yaroslav drove to Lychakiv Cemetery, where he’d buried his family eight days earlier.

The horror of their deaths — by a Russian hypersonic missile in what was thought to be one of Ukraine’s safest cities — had ripped across the country, proving once again there is no sanctuary from the war.

“Memories of them keep me moving forward,” Yaroslav said in his first interview since the Sept. 4 strike. “It’s very difficult to see all of the attention and news on our family out there, but it’s also important.”

Only an hour’s drive from the Polish border, Lviv is known for its cobblestone streets, horse-drawn carriages and relative quiet. The city’s population has swelled by more than 150,000 people in the 2½ years since Russia invaded Ukraine, inundated by families fleeing violence in the rest of the country. But the strike — which Yaroslav was the only member of his family to survive — was a brutal reminder for Lviv that it is not immune.

Thousands of residents turned out for the funeral at the cemetery, where a single grave was dug for the four white caskets. Lviv’s mayor called it “the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” President Volodymyr Zelensky implored that “the world see this terror and react.”

Zelensky on Friday completed a visit to the United States, where he met with President Joe Biden and other top officials to plead for more air defenses and the approval of long-range missile strikes into Russia, which might have helped protect Yaroslav’s family.

Weeks earlier, as he visited the cemetery, Yaroslav couldn’t help but wonder if his family’s sacrifice might persuade U.S. leaders to change the rules for Ukraine.

Now, he stepped through the cemetery’s entrance with his mother, their arms linked. Hunched beneath his grief, Yaroslav didn’t speak. They followed the path uphill, until the brick kissed dirt. Ahead, four crosses were stabbed in the earth, so close they nearly touched.

On the far right was Emilia, the little girl who would never turn 7.

‘Myself without you’

Two miles across Lviv, on a narrow street shaded by chestnut trees, passersby stop at Yaroslav and Eugenia’s apartment building — the site becoming a touchstone for residents grappling with the war.

The building’s roof was smashed in, the inner stairwell destroyed, the perimeter now marked with caution tape and patrolled by police. Out back, the devastation was starker. A bra swung from a scorched tree. Among the mounds of splintered wood and concrete were relics of normal life: a casserole pan, a crayon drawing, a rain boot patterned with strawberries.

Near the sidewalk, a memorial had been erected for the seven victims — three other residents of the building, plus the four Bazylevyches, all blond and smiling, their faces now familiar to onlookers.

In the days after the strike, an edited photo of Yaroslav, 48, and Eugenia, 43, with their daughters went viral. In the picture, they are dressed in jeans and traditional embroidered Ukrainian tunics, called vychyvankas, for Emilia’s first day of school. Yaryna, 21, smirks; Daria, 18, holds a bouquet of sunflowers. They are cast in gray scale. Only Yaroslav is in color. The caption reads: “The man in this photo is the only one left alive.”

Yaroslav has grown used to being recognized on the street. He’s made multiple trips back to their home to scavenge what can be saved. Once, their apartment had been filled with good white wine, friends and more art than the walls could hold. Creativity was encouraged by Eugenia, who worked in digital marketing and, in her free time, taught yoga, learned French, designed jewelry and mixed perfumes.

“When God wants to give a compliment to a woman, he gives her a daughter,” said her longtime friend Uliana Piatak. “She had three daughters. She was always so happy to be their mom.”

Yaryna, the eldest, was a free spirit, into rock climbing and traveling, once driving her mom and sisters more than a dozen hours to Italy for a vacation. She was a program manager at a Lviv cultural initiative and also worked in IT, in addition to volunteering. In her free time, she’d been teaching Daria to drive, too.

“I used to go everywhere she would go,” said her cousin Mariia Filevych, 18. “I wanted to be as cool as Yaryna.”

Daria was more reserved. She’d internalized her family’s stories of Soviet aggression. Her ancestors had survived Moscow’s man-made famine, known as the Holodomor, and her great-great-grandfather had been executed by Soviet soldiers. She wrote in an academic paper how these stories “helped me remember who I really am.” She’d earned a coveted scholarship to study Ukrainian culture at Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, where she also took acting classes.

And then there was Emilia. More than a decade younger than her sisters, they joked that she had a completely different set of parents than they’d had. Spunky and outspoken, the 6-year-old loved singing, particularly “Dancing Queen” by Abba. She taught herself English by watching cartoons, becoming so fluent that her father sometimes didn’t understand what she was saying.

Their life wasn’t perfect, but they had each other, and to Yaroslav, that was enough.

“I almost don’t remember myself without you,” Yaroslav wrote to Eugenia on their 22nd wedding anniversary. “You are my foundation.”

‘The very last moment’

On the morning of Sept. 4, the Kinzhal — a hypersonic air-launched ballistic missile — took off from Russia. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, it was aimed at a military facility that manufactured and repaired missiles. The projectile whooshed 600 miles, arcing over most of Ukraine — the distance from New York City to Cincinnati — several times faster than the speed of sound. It was to be part of the biggest bombardment of Lviv since the war started and included 13 missiles and dozens of drones.

In the Bazylevych home, all was still.

The night before, Eugenia had taken Emilia on a walk while Yaroslav consoled Daria. She was anxious about her sophomore year at university, wanting to make something of herself but unsure how. When Emilia returned, he helped his youngest with her math and Ukrainian homework. She’d just started second grade.

Yaryna didn’t get home until late. On Tuesdays, she usually watched movies at a friend’s house.

As dawn cracked the horizon, the air raid siren wailed.

Eugenia grabbed their emergency backpack of documents from the wardrobe next to their apartment entrance. They usually sheltered in the corridor outside their front door, safe from flying shrapnel.

She left the apartment with the girls. An explosion sounded — deafeningly close.

Yaroslav was still inside when his phone rang. Eugenia was taking the girls down the building’s stairs to a lower floor for safety. He should come, she said —

The call abruptly ended. The missile hit.

The stairs crumpled, crushing seven people.

Disoriented — debris lodged in his eye — Yaroslav looked for his cellphone, blown out of his hand. He was barefoot. It was dark, dust thick in the air, and blood splattered his face. He needed to call Eugenia back. He walked to the front of the apartment, looking out the dormer window of their bedroom.

Firefighters and police arrived. So did his sister and brother-in-law, who lived a four-minute walk away. He shouted that his children were under the rubble. Rescue workers cranked up a hydraulic lift, bringing Yaroslav down to the sidewalk. By then, a crowd had gathered.

Rescue workers dug through the demolished staircase. Photographers on the scene captured Yaroslav’s vacant gaze as he tried to help.

“We found one girl first,” said his brother-in-law Yaroslav Filevych. “It was only by the strands of her hair that I realized it was my goddaughter Daria. And then we started pulling out these bigger slabs of stone, and they were smeared with blood.”

Her father had to be dragged away.

“I was hoping until the very last moment that they were safe,” Yaroslav said later, weeping. “Maybe if they stayed in the corridor, this tragedy wouldn’t have happened. Maybe if I could’ve moved the debris for them, they could’ve survived.”

‘The best years of my life’

At the cemetery, the sky darkened with rain. Yaroslav approached Emilia’s grave first, gazing at her photo mounted on the cross — her crown of flowers, her thin-lipped smile.

His reflection shivered on the picture frame glass. His shoulders shook with sobs.

He talked to his 6-year-old in his head, just as he had on the day he buried her — when he thanked his family “for the memories, for the best years of my life.” He planned to create a scholarship in their name at Daria’s university, which he would announce in coming weeks. The war was long, and already, he worried they’d soon be forgotten.

But the collective grief of a city — measured in the fresh flowers, stuffed animals and candles flickering on their grave, in a copy of “The Little Prince” left near Emilia’s cross — would be slow to fade. Long after Yaroslav left the ceremony, the visitors would still arrive: to keep vigil, to leave a prayer, to remember.

Oksana Parafeniuk contributed to this report.