According to reports, a female Russian sniper with 40 kills was apprehended after being abandoned on the battlefield.
After being wounded in a skirmish with Ukrainian troops, Irina Starikova, whose call sign is Bagira, is claimed to have told her captors she was left to die.
She is 41 years old, according to the Peacemaker Center, which investigates crimes perpetrated by Russian rebels in the Ukraine conflict.
She has two daughters, ages 11 and 9, and is divorced from Alexander Fedotov, their father.
Starikova fought alongside the Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which has been fighting the Kyiv government since 2014.
The Ukrainian armed forces reported her capture alongside photos of her, claiming she shot our detainees in 2014.
Giorgi Revishvili, a scholar at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies, also confirmed Starikova’s capture.
Revishvili also claimed responsibility for the deaths of 40 Ukrainians, including civilians.
A soldier named Vlad Ivanov told Ukraine’s Obozrevatel news website that Starikova was given medical attention when she was apprehended.
Starikova served in the 11th Specialized Special Operations Division as a sniper. Her work has earned her the George Cross medal, according to the Peacemaker Center.
According to the researchers, she is married to Aleksandr Ogrenich, a Belarussian soldier. He goes by the call sign Gorynych and also fights for the Russian separatist armed forces, according to a 2017 investigation by the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union.
During a seven-year struggle in eastern Ukraine, Russia backed separatist insurgents, killing over 14,000 people.
A Canadian soldier considered as one of the world’s deadliest snipers is said to be fighting on the Ukrainian side.
President Volodymyr Zelensky had requested overseas recruits, and Wali had responded.
Between 2009 and 2011, the 40-year-old was sent twice to Afghanistan as a sniper with the Canadian military.
The feared marksman claims he can kill at a range of 1,531 yards using a $6,600 military-grade.338 sniper rifle.
