Steph Deschamps / August 9, 2022
The first female Russian officer, Lieutenant Colonel Olga Korsa Kachura (52) was killed in Ukraine. This is confirmed by Denis Pushilin, the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.
Her words had caused outrage. Lieutenant Colonel Olga Kachura, who boasted that she likes to shoot Ukrainians, was killed by a Ukrainian missile that hit her car while she was driving in the town of Horlivka, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. The 52-year-old woman from eastern Ukraine was commanding a unit of the forces of the secessionist and pro-Russian Donetsk People's Republic (DPR).
She was sometimes called Vladimir Putin's she-wolf. Celebrated in eastern Ukraine as a heroine, she is the first female officer and the 97th high-ranking Russian officer to die in the war in Ukraine. The mayor of Horlivka, Ivan Prikhodko, hailed on Telegram a brave and wise woman who was there since the beginning of the DPR people's militia. Vladimir Putin posthumously awarded her the title of Hero of the Russian Federation on the morning of Thursday, August 4, the highest Russian honorary title for her courage and heroism in the performance of her military duty.
Later in the day, a bombing took place in the heart of Donetsk, hitting the opera house where the funeral was taking place. Russians and Ukrainians accused each other of being behind the strike, which killed several people. The mayor of the city, Alexey Kulemzin, deplored to the state agency TASS a brutal act, a specific and deliberate attack.
According to Ukrainian authorities, Olga Kachura dressed as soldiers of the Ukrainian forces to commit war crimes and discredit them.
The woman known as Kursa was sentenced in absentia to 12 years in prison for participation in a terrorist group or organization by a Ukrainian court in January 2022. Ukrainian intelligence services claimed that she personally guided artillery fire in key battles in the Donbas in 2014-2015, causing numerous casualties.