Relatives, Mourners Reflect Following Russian Airliner Crash

St. Petersburg, Russia — -- A gray pall of fog descended over the city Sunday, accompanying a national day of mourning across Russia to remember the 224 victims who died after a Russian airliner crashed in Egypt.

Kogalymavia Flight 7K9268 disintegrated over the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday.

From mid-morning, requiem services were being held in every church in St. Petersburg. Television stations replaced most of their light entertainment with quieter movies and documentary films, and many events were postponed or canceled. Some of the city’s dance radio stations switched to playing soothing music.

At a hotel close to the airport, where officials were receiving relatives of victims, the hushed atmosphere masked the agony of many of those arriving. Investigators took families' details, while grief counselors met them as they entered.

In the lobby, one woman sat flattened into a chair. She began showing journalists photos of two relatives, managing to give their names before grief seemed to strangle her, and counselors led her away.

Another woman, Tatiana Makarova, clutched a larger portrait of her smiling 32-year-old daughter, Darya Shiller. The mother’s voice broke as she tried to speak, her pain seeming to rear up over her.

“When you lose your children – life is finished,” she said.

As the evening moved into a murky night, a few hundred people gathered spontaneously on the city’s main square, across from the Winter Palace, laying flowers and lighting candles.

People stood in a strange, muffled quiet in the center of the square, while the rainy murk glowed with the lights of nearby buildings. Many did not know any of the victims personally but wanted to show their sorrow.

The cause of the crash is still unknown; Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee, which is helping Egyptian authorities investigate the disaster, said that the plane broke up in mid-air, but declined to suggest any reasons.

In Russia a criminal investigation is on-going. Investigators searched the offices of the airline Kogalymavia, removing papers. Russia’s Federal Transport Oversight Service announced that it was ordering Kogalymavia, also known by its brand name Metrojet, to provide a full risk evaluation of its remaining A321 aircraft. With some Egyptian officials announcing they believe a technical failure is the most likely cause, criticisms have begun to appear in the Russian press of the country’s low-cost charter airlines and their alleged willingness to cut-corners on safety.

Kogalymavia insists that its plane was in good technical condition and that its safety rating is one of the best in the country.

On Sunday evening, a plane carrying the first bodies of the crash’s victims took-off from Cairo. The plane arrived into St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport in the early morning of Monday, from where the remains were transferred to a crematorium in the city where families would identify their relatives.

For those on the edge of the disaster or touched more directly by it, the pain has prompted a panicked, shocked sensation. A local man who works as a taxi driver, often at the airport, described how a friend had warned him about the crash when he was in the terminal buildings.

“I heard about it and I knew I couldn’t stay there,” said the man, who was friends with a passenger. “I knew that within a few minutes, horror would start.”

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