A Ukrainian female soldier flies one of the war's heaviest drones and has twice turned down a promotion to keep doing it. "Tsyhancha" went from FPV operator to piloting the Heavy Shot bomber in the 125th Separate Heavy Mechanized Brigade, which told her story on social media.
She decided to enlist, watching friends and acquaintances who were already defending Ukraine. At the recruitment center, they offered her drones, and that is where the path began. She flew FPVs first, then moved to strike wings, but she always wanted the heavy bomber.
"First I learned to fly FPV. Then we got onto strike wings. But I always wanted to be a 'bomber.' Now I work on Heavy Shot," she says.
Heavy bombers are the reusable half of Ukraine's drone war. Where an FPV explodes once, a heavy bomber drops its payload and flies back for more, and the crews use them to hit Russian positions at night and to run supplies into the front. Ukraine's most famous heavy bomber, the Vampire, topped the battlefield kill rankings in 2025 with 2.5 million combat missions.
Intuition matters more than theory
Technical skill can be learned, she says. What carries a mission is the ability to decide fast.
"You can learn all the theory, but if you can't instantly find a way out of a non-standard situation, it will be very hard. Intuition plays the biggest role," she says.
She has not chased rank. She reveals she has repeatedly refused a sergeant's post, even when it came bundled with training in Britain.
"I didn't come here to be a boss. I came here to do the job," she explains.
Olivier that didn't make it
Heavy drone crews do more than strike. They regularly run water, ammunition, and other necessities to forward positions. One run is stuck in the whole unit's memory.
Before a holiday, the soldiers decided to deliver Olivier salad to the infantry. Mid-flight, they had to drop the cargo as an emergency measure.
"We ran after the package, and it was already flattened on the road. We gathered it all up, laughing, and said: 'Now send us your Olivier too,'" she recalls.
On serving in a men's unit, she says she has never felt any discomfort over it.
"I like my unit and my colleagues. I'm always sure of my people," she says.
She is one of a growing cohort
Tsyhancha is part of a shift that is tracked throughout the war. More than 70,000 women serve in Ukraine's military, roughly 5,500 in combat roles.
Women now fly Ukraine's heaviest drones in units across the front. In March 2026, a pilot with the callsign "Harley Quinn" flew the Vampire into Russian lines at night for the 77th Airmobile Brigade. Ukraine's National Guard stood up its first all-female FPV strike crew in the Zaporizhzhia sector, building its own munitions and running its own attack missions.
Kateryna "Meow" Troian flew over a thousand combat missions for the 82nd Air Assault Brigade before Russian forces killed her near Pokrovsk in June 2025.
