In Human Moment, CNN’s Erin Burnett Breaks Down During Harrowing Interview With Ukrainian Father Who Discovered Family’s Fate Via Grim NYT Photo

deadline.com:

In a moment of empathy, CNN Out Front anchor Erin Burnett lost her composure but forged ahead professionally while interviewing Serhiy Perebyinis, a Ukrainian man who discovered his wife and children had been killed when he saw a photo of their bodies in a story that had been published in the New York Times.Burnett, started the interview by asking Perebyinis, who had been out fighting Russian forces when his family died, if he had had time to bury his boy and girl and wife of 23 yers.

He said he had. She then got to the even more difficult part.“Serhiy, as a parent, any person around the world can’t imagine your unbearable loss, above all losing your children.”Burnett, who has three children of her own, bowed her head and took a long pause.“Could you tell me about them?” she said through tears.“We used to see each other with my wife on Google Maps, and that morning I noticed that there was a unusual geolocation between Kyiv and their ping and then, 20 minutes later, her phone moved to another location, to a hospital in Kyiv and I suspected something was wrong,” said a stone-faced Perebyinis. “And I asked friends to come to the hospital and find out whether there were any bad news, and then Twitter, there was news on Twitter…there was mortar shelling and that a family died: two children, their mother and their father.

And then I saw a photo on Twitter and I recognized my children. I recognized their things and their clothes. And I called my friends to say, ‘The children are dead.

Their bodies are lying on pavement,’ and I asked them, ‘Please could you help me to find my wife.’ “Burnett, tears now streaming down her face, then asked Perebyinis again for a specific remembrance of his children. “If anyone watching could