“Which day of a full-scale war was the worst for your family?” – Sukhanov asked.
According to Mirzoyan, the most terrible thing for him was the very fact that the aggressor country of the Russian Federation carried out a full-scale invasion of sovereign Ukraine.
“I remember the first day, there was such a debate: should we leave or not. And we went shopping,” he said.
“And in the evening, my friends called and said: “Run away, because…” his wife, Ukrainian singer Tonya Matvienko, supplemented Mirzoyan’s answer, but he corrected her.
“And in the evening, strangers called, and the Security Service arrived [Украины] and said: “Mirzoyan, please take Nina Mitrofanovna out. We won’t buy her back or change her later.” Well, they started to dramatize that there is a threat of seizing the government quarter,” explained the son-in-law of the late Nina Matvienko.
The singer said that after that he took his mother-in-law, his wife, his daughter and Tony Matvienko’s daughter from her first marriage to the border, and returned to Kyiv.
Mirzoyan did not specify why the SBU officers asked him to take his mother-in-law out of the Ukrainian capital, but on October 8, 2025, Ukrainian singer Oksana Bilozir admitted that on the first day of a full-scale war they called her and demanded that she leave Kyiv. According to Bilozir, this is due to the fact that the Russian occupiers put her on the execution list.
What is known about the execution lists of Russians
The current military-political leadership of the aggressor country, Russia, purposefully prepared for the genocide of Ukrainians long before the start of a full-scale invasion. The head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Kirill, spoke about this in November 2024. Budanov, speaking at the forum “Genocidal practices of the Russian Federation in Ukraine: from the Holodomor to the Russian-Ukrainian war.”
He said that before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian occupiers were given instructions on the location of collective graves. They also compiled hit lists, which were to include teachers of the Ukrainian language, literature, history, ATO veterans, journalists, scientists, writers, priests of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and other denominations that supported Ukraine, public and political figures, heads of state authorities and self-government.
“We saw horrific mass crimes against Ukrainian citizens, the facts of which became known to the whole world. The atrocities of units of the Russian Armed Forces in Borodyanka, Bucha, Gostomel, Izyum, Mariupol and many other settlements of Ukraine showed that these identical and synchronous actions were based on clear doctrinal provisions of the Russian genocidal policy of the authorities and military leadership,” Budanov concluded.
Context
Nina Matvienko, having left Kyiv, refused to leave Ukraine, and Tonya Matvienko and her children first went to Portugal and then moved to the UK.
After some time, Tonya Matvienko reunited with her husband in Ukraine. Nina Matvienko died in October 2023 in Kyiv.
