“I got married young, had two daughters, and my husband forbade me from going to military school,” Kateryna explains. After their divorce and the start of the full-scale war, she didn’t hesitate - she immediately went to the military enlistment office. “They told me to go and cook borscht. I was so offended… I told them, ‘You’ve lost a great fighter!’ Then I turned and left.”
For two years, she searched for a way to join the Armed Forces. This autumn, she found it - through the Ministry of Defence’s Drone Force project, which provides professional training for aspiring drone pilots.
Of course, her family was shocked by her decision. “I have two sisters. At first, they said, ‘Katya, come on, where are you going?’ But then we sat down and talked, and they supported me.” Kateryna left her children with her ex-husband and his new wife - he is also a soldier but serves at home. “My daughters supported me too,” she adds, smiling. “They are very proud of me. They say, ‘Our mum is a fighter!’ That gives me strength because I’m not just here for nothing - I’m fighting for my children, for the future of all our children.”
To begin with, Katya had to complete a basic general military training. “Basic training wasn’t difficult for me at all. Running and shooting was even fun. You wake up in the morning and think - what else will they teach me today?”
She received her call sign at the training centre. “There were two other girls with me,” Katya recalls. “They saw me - small, cheerful, talkative, with pigtails. And they said, ‘You look exactly like Toska from the film Girls. You can’t put your finger in her mouth, or she’ll bite it off!’ That’s really me!”
Kateryna’s self-confidence and boldness make it clear there’s no point in asking if she’s afraid. But she speaks about it with a cool head: “Only those who aren’t in their right mind aren’t afraid. Of course, I was scared - I didn’t fully understand where I was going. But when I arrived at my brigade and saw my guys, I felt like I was with family.”
From time to time, she switches to Russian and immediately apologises. Originally from Odesa, Toska rarely spoke Ukrainian. But she says the 107th Battalion influenced her: “Most of the fighters here are from Volyn. I really liked the way they speak, so I try to as well.”
Katya’s crew consists of three people. They work for three days, then rest for three days - before going back to “kill orcs”, as she calls it. Toska pilots a Mavic drone, which detects Russian infantry and equipment and can drop “gifts” on them. She has only been working for two months, so she admits she hasn’t killed anyone yet: “But I have found them! And the guys have already taken care of them.”
So far, Kateryna is proud that she hasn’t lost a single drone. She even made a bet with her commander that she wouldn’t lose one in three months: “We bet on a wish. I won’t say what it is, but don’t worry - it’s a decent one.”
Toska takes great care of her drones. “Every time I’m about to fly one, I tell it, ‘Baby, we’re going to make a few circles and come back home.’” She picks up the quadcopter and grins. “And when the war is over, we’ll film the weddings of everyone in our unit who isn’t married yet.”
She got her first real taste of war when her third trip to the position ended in shelling. “We were hit by shells and grenades. A fragment hit my comrade’s helmet, and we had to be evacuated in a tank. But in moments like that, I convince myself that everything will be fine. I sit and think - no, not now, I have to go home tomorrow and do my laundry. We’re not dying today! And then, somehow, the shelling stops.”
Even after incidents like that, Kateryna has no regrets. “I will never leave my brothers - I will go with them to the end! If we put down our weapons, stop flying our Mavics, and say ‘to hell with it all,’ then the entire Russian army will come here. And why did we fight all these years?” She points to her favourite chevron. It bears lyrics from the song Lullaby for the Enemy: Did you want this land? So now mix with her.
Finally, we asked Kateryna about her attitude toward male draft evaders. She recalls that when she first arrived at the brigade, she was immediately asked the same question. “I answered simply: if the guys who hide behind their wives’ skirts don’t want to fight, then we, women, will have to. At the very least, they should help the army in some way, instead of just living for their own pleasure. The war will only end when they understand that.”
Toska dreams of waking up one day to find that the war is over. “I think it will happen in 2025,” she says with conviction.
When we bring up the topic of men and women in the military, Katya insists she hasn’t faced sexism. “I don’t know how it is in other brigades, but in ours, there’s definitely none. We’re like a real family, you know?”
Her comrades standing nearby laugh. “It’s the opposite here! She’s been training us since day one - she saw how we lived and immediately said we wouldn’t live like that anymore. She makes us clean all the time! So, really, who’s being sexist here?”
