From the ABC yesterday, a profile of Olha Bihar, a 31-year-old lawyer from Kyiv, who has morphed into a semi-famous military commander and veteran of Bakhmut. She serves as a commander of a mortar unit and an artillery officer, with the call sign Witch. Bihar’s journey from law to war began when she woke up to Russian missiles hitting the capital and decided to join Ukraine's armed forces along with her mother and brother, who are combat medics.
To do so, she had to send her seven-year-old son out of the country to safety.
To explain why she made the sacrifice of being separated from her son, Olha quoted her younger brother who had just won a law scholarship to study at Kyiv University.
"My brother said, 'I don't want to study law because we don't need to study law if Russia comes to our country. There is no law in Russia and people have no rules'," she said.
"So we have to defend our country. And then we can think about the future."
Besides running the mortar crew, she does a lot of work on Tik Tok, and I remember seeing one of her videos via Twitter. It was scarymazing.
I read this one this morning. I couldnt help but be cynical about pretty people getting more airtime than poor old Joe Schmosky who was an electrician for a middling company sitting in the corner cleaning his equipment and just wanting to be able to sit down one day without wondering if he'll get to see another week out. But then chided myself because that kid who was shipped off to live with an aunt will likely not have a mother when he grows up, and I followed up with my daily mantra of "eff you Putin and Russia in general"
Creator bless this lady. May her ammo always be dry, her baseplate light, and she never has to respond to "final protective fires/charge zero."
I read this one this morning. I couldnt help but be cynical about pretty people getting more airtime than poor old Joe Schmosky who was an electrician for a middling company sitting in the corner cleaning his equipment and just wanting to be able to sit down one day without wondering if he'll get to see another week out. But then chided myself because that kid who was shipped off to live with an aunt will likely not have a mother when he grows up, and I followed up with my daily mantra of "eff you Putin and Russia in general"