NAPLES – A 22-year-old Ukrainian women who had recently fled the war in Ukraine allegedly was burned alive in her apartment by her partner, though her 5-year-old daughter was saved from harm by a Russian neighbour, Il Fatto Quotidiano said.

 “I burned Anastasiia. You can buy flowers for the funeral,” were the text messages that 26-year-old Dmytro Trembach, also from Ukraine, allegedly sent to his partner’s mother. Trembach has been in prison in Naples since March 17 on charges of murdering Anastasiia Bondarenko.

  The man set fire to the house they shared with other immigrants in Naples while she was taking a shower on March 10, police said. The motive is thought to have been "an intense and morbid jealousy."

 Trembach doused the bathroom in a flammable liquid, leaving Bondarenko no way to escape once he had set the room alight. 

 Dmytro denied the relationship with Anastasiia and tried to deflect the blame to a fellow Ukrainian, before then trying to escape. Carabinieri and investigators from the Naples prosecutor's office, coordinated by Raffaello Falcone, caught him in Acerra, not far from Naples, and he was arrested on charges of voluntary homicide aggravated by futile reasons.  The investigating judge, Nola Sebastiano Napolitano, who validated the arrest, said the victim "was killed in Naples at the hands of her partner, in an unhealthy emotional relationship poisoned by suspicion and jealousy, after escaping from the war in Ukraine together with her baby daughter.”

 In the hearing on Monday, the defence did not raise any objections, nor did it oppose the validation of the arrest. Judge Napolitano explained the aggravating circumstance of the futile reasons, contested by the accused. Jealousy is a motive "so mild, banal and disproportionate to the seriousness of the crime" that it was declared "a mere pretext for venting of a criminal impulse.”

 The little Ukrainian girl was saved by her Russian neighbour, Oleva Donchack, who took her and brought her to safety while she was crying, "run, run, save my mum,” polie said.

 Trembach claimed to investigators that he was not at home when the tragedy occurred, while the little girl said the opposite. She said that when she saw what was happening, she had asked him to help.

 ln