Andriy Vadaturskyy was in France when he got the call he’d long feared: A Russian missile had destroyed his parents home in southern Ukraine, killing his mother. For three impossibly long hours he held out hope for his father, the revered founder of one of Ukraine’s largest agricultural businesses, but then he too was found dead under the rubble.
"I kissed my kids and drove to Ukraine,” said Vadaturskyy, in his first interview since the July 31 attack that saw him take over within days as Nibulon Ltd.’s owner and chief executive. "I was driving and crying. I did not know I could cry for so long.”
Within hours of the attack, a spokesman for the Ukrainian president’s office said the missile’s course left "no doubts” the Vadaturskyys had been targeted, a theme picked up widely in the nation’s media. The strike came just a day before Russia allowed the first vessel since the start of the war to sail from nearby Odesa, under a deal to get Ukraine grain back into global markets and tame raging food price inflation around the world.