WHEN a squad of Russian soldiers forced their prisoners to kneel in the dirt, all Yulia Mykytenko could do was watch.
As the trailblazing female commander of a Ukrainian drone platoon, Yulia was in the horrific position of witnessing war crimes unfold in real time via a live feed on an iPad.
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Her team had spotted the Russian paratroopers in the final stages of an assault on a frontline Ukrainian outpost in the Donbas region.
She watched as the Russian troops blasted tear gas into the bunker, forcing its five Ukrainian defenders to come spluttering into the open.
Yulia, 29, tells The Sun: “We saw it all on the live feed.
“Our guys didn’t have time to react.
“They had to come outside to breathe.
“When they came out, they surrendered.
“The Russians made them kneel.
“Then they shot them.
“And the Russians took over the position.”
Such atrocities are not unusual.
Ukraine says it has recorded more than 90 cases of prisoners of war being captured and executed by Russian invaders.
All but a handful happened this year, and Yulia suspects it is a new policy.
She says: “The Russians are not taking prisoners now.
“They are shooting them in front of our drones.”
Witnessing war’s horrors has become a gruesome part of her job.
Sometimes she has to use her drones to find dead or wounded comrades.
Once it took her half a day to find what was left of her much-loved commander, Captain Dmytro, who was blown to bits by a direct hit from a Russian artillery shell.
Those are her darkest days — when comrades are killed or maimed and she cannot do anything to help.
Yulia is no stranger to loss.
Her soldier husband Illia Serbin was killed by Russian shelling in 2018.
Her father Mykola, a sergeant, set himself on fire in 2020 to protest against what he saw as President Zelensky’s failure to stand up to Russia’s aggression in the run-up to Putin’s full-scale invasion.
And, perhaps inevitably, she has lost one of her own soldiers on a mission that she gave him.
When I ask her how she copes, she says: “I don’t know how to answer.”
‘I despise men who don’t protect their family’
Then she adds with quiet steel: “The one thing I can do is not let all those feelings overwhelm me.
“I consider that part of my job.”
How is morale in the army more broadly?
“I feel extremely tired,” she says.
And with that tiredness comes frustration that not everyone is pulling their weight.
Yulia, who speaks fluent English and dreams of being a professional translator, says: “Sometimes it annoys me that people back home still have normal lives, going to restaurants and shops and the cinema.
“Especially when I see men together with their girlfriends and children and they know that my soldiers don’t have those opportunities.”
Squaddies like her get just 15 days’ leave a year as the battle rages.
She adds: “I think each grown man and woman who is able to hold a rifle must serve and protect themselves.
“It is not the country you are protecting, it is yourself and your family.
“If you can’t protect yourself and your family, then you have no right to live in your country.”
As she talks, her fury grows: “I despise such men who don’t take a rifle and protect their family.
“And I despise the women who chose such men and who hide them.
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“I would be very interested to see what these men will do when the Russians come to their houses and start to rape their wives.”
Then she checks herself.
She says: “On the other hand, I feel good when I return to Kyiv for 15 days and can have my normal life in cafes and theatres.”
When Putin unleashed his full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine’s armed forces were swamped with enthusiastic volunteers determined to defend their country.
Yulia was one of them.
She rejoined the 54th Mechanised Brigade where she had served in the Donbas with her late husband Illia between 2016 and 2018.
But as the war has dragged on, that pool of volunteers has dwindled.
War has dragged on
Countless thousands have been killed or injured, and Kyiv has had to draft men by force to replace them.
Shocking footage has shown men of fighting age being dragged kicking and screaming from bars and clubs into waiting police vans.
Like many of her comrades, Yulia has mixed feelings about Ukraine’s emergency draft.
She says: “A year ago I didn’t support forced mobilisation.
“Soldiers who come to us that way are not very good soldiers.
“It’s quite hard to persuade them to be warriors.”
It annoys me that people still have normal lives, going to restaurants and shops. Especially when I see men with girlfriends and they don’t know that my soldiers don’t have those opportunities
Yulia Mykytenko
Now, more than 1,000 days into the bloodbath, it feels like it might be Ukraine’s only option.
Yulia says: “It is not a good idea, but it is the only way to fill the army with people because we have a right to have a rest.”
The 25 soldiers in Yulia’s platoon are all volunteers.
One is a former YouTuber, there is a sailor from the merchant navy and a computer engineer.
Some are former assault troops who have come to her unit shell-shocked or scarred from their time in the infantry.
For those who are physically unscathed, the grinding war takes its toll in other ways.
‘If West is not decisive there won’t be peace’
Recently, one of her soldiers asked her if he could go on leave because his young son was forgetting who his father was.
Yulia says: “My comrade came to me and asked for a vacation.
“He said, ‘Can I go on leave because my son started to call me uncle’.”
Luckily, Yulia agreed. “I told him, ‘Of course, why didn’t you come to me earlier?’ ”
When Yulia visited London earlier this year to promote her critically acclaimed biography, How Good It Is I Have No Fear Of Dying, it was her first break from hostilities in almost a year.
It came as President Zelensky was touring Western capitals promoting his “victory plan” to end the war, which hinges on joining Nato to deter a future Russian invasion.
Yulia is convinced that peace talks are coming and the war may finally be over next year.
She says: “I am sure that we will negotiate.
“We are exhausted.
“Russia is exhausted.
“Both sides are exhausted.”
The issue is whether that peace will endure.
She says: “If the West has enough conviction to keep the pressure on Russia, if it lets Ukraine into Nato, then there is a chance to avoid the next wave of aggression.
“But if the West is not decisive, there won’t be peace.
“There will be a short pause to prepare for the next wave of war.
“And unfortunately, Russia will be ready for it much sooner than Ukraine.”
- How Good It Is I Have No Fear Of Dying: Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko’s Fight For Ukraine, by Lara Marlowe, is published by the Head of Zeus imprint of Bloomsbury, £20.
