As we sit in a small white farmhouse surrounded by vibrant yellow rape fields and lush woodland, Oksana Krasnova smiles when I ask if she enjoys her job. ‘Of sure,’ she responds.
‘You are lying down, you are relaxing, you are breathing, you are looking around, you are listening.’ The 27-year-old, with her neatly plaited hair and ready grin, compares her work to meditation: ‘You are lying down, you are resting, you are breathing, you are looking around, you are listening.’
It appears to be blissful. Then there’s a tremendous cannon blast again. And Oksana describes the devastating goals of her mission in eastern Ukraine’s battlefields: ‘I kill if there is an opportunity and a need for it.’
She’s a sharpshooter, after all. Oksana is one of the elite Ukrainian fighters who must ignore the fury of Russia’s bombardment while hiding in bushes, trenches, and wooded areas in order to target Russian forces hundreds of meters away.
Her husband Stanislas, a sniper, sits peacefully next us, part of the same Ukrainian army unit that is engaged in the terrible battle for control of the Donbas region, which President Volodymyr Zelensky has dubbed “hell.”
These specialized soldiers, who have been trained to carry out covert missions deep into enemy territory, are rare in number, highly talented, and capable of instilling fear through surprise attacks.
They are crucial in sabotaging Russian morale, acquiring intelligence, and disrupting activities.
Snipers were revered as heroes of the war against the Nazis in Soviet military mythology. Vasily Zaitsev was portrayed by Jude Law in the film Enemy At The Gates, and was credited with 225 kills during the 1942 Battle of Stalingrad.
Perched on the makeshift mattresses of their military unit here in the farmhouse, Oksana and Stanislas play down any movie-style valor.
However, a large hole in the earth has been left outside by a giant Russian bomb that was placed in an attempt to kill their close-knit crew.
Neither will reveal how many people they have killed or how many missions they have completed in this heinous conflict.
‘Some people prefer to boast about killing large numbers of people, but this isn’t always the case. So I’m not going to talk about it,’ Oksana says.
‘I think about my breathing and calculations when I’m looking at a target.’ You are not required to consider your target as a person. You simply perform your job, and you must do it properly. You must be calm and concentrated.’
The pair met at a book launch through common acquaintances soon before joining pro-democracy protests that erupted across Ukraine nine years ago. Following the subsequent crackdown by Russia-linked security forces, both were injured.
Stanislas, now 35, had to watch from afar as his native area of Crimea was seized by Vladimir Putin as he recovered in a Kyiv hospital from bullet wounds to his legs.
The first casualty in this fight was a childhood buddy of Stanislas.
‘That’s when I realized this is a real war, with real bloodshed, and that the Russians are here to kill,’ he recalls. ‘I despise the Russian government,’ says the author.
After recovering from his injuries, the former police officer joined the Ukrainian volunteer forces fighting Putin-backed separatists as the war in Donbas broke out soon after. Toward the end of 2014, he took part in one of the most violent clashes in Donetsk.
Stanislas has rejoined the military forces after he and his wife both dropped out of their criminal law doctoral programs — as well as their human rights work – to fight Putin’s new all-out assault.
Stanislas assisted Oksana in learning marksmanship skills after spending several years as a teenager at a specialty school for potential Olympic competitors in Crimea. ‘His sniping is incredible, and he taught me a lot,’ she says.
Stanislas reveals that for many years, shooting at a competitive level was his hobby.
‘These abilities just so happened to come in helpful throughout the battle.’ Sport shooting isn’t the same as becoming a sniper, but it can assist a lot. I consider sniping to be a sport. I need to get as close to the center of the target as possible. That is all there is to it.
‘If the opportunity arises and you see enemy infantry, you must kill them.’ Sniping is a very profitable business.’
Stanislas admits to firing one successful shot at more than 700 meters (765 yards) in April, but cautions, ‘Firing at a distance of more than 600 meters is a lottery.’ The wind is the biggest issue.’
He demonstrates how they use mobile phone apps in the field to compute shot trajectory, feeding in details like distance, humidity, temperature, and wind speed – all of which can have a significant impact on the trajectory of a bullet at long range.
Stanislas serves as a field commander and fires rocket-propelled grenades, thus the couple does not go on missions together.
Snipers are currently trained to operate alone – to covertly infiltrate areas, send back observations of enemy positions, and mount precision infantry attacks.
The country’s top snipers, according to Ruslan Shpakovych, the country’s leading army sniping instructor, are proving more effective in battle than their Russian counterparts, who are hampered by their inferior equipment.
The main goal of the Ukrainian snipers is not to shoot and hit, but to observe and gather information. ‘A good sniper isn’t just a soldier who kills one person, but also one who informs their unit about the enemy’s location,’ says Shpakovych.
Stanislas has just returned from a mission that took him as close as 400 yards to enemy lines. He claims they are now closer to the Russians in Kyiv and Kharkiv than they were earlier in the war, despite the fact that he did not see them in their trenches on his last rotation to the nearby forward front line.
He does, however, show me photographs of their position along a line of trees beside fields riddled with holes caused by the Russian bombardment, which is causing heavy Ukrainian casualties.
‘It appears that the enemy is unconcerned about the loss of men, so they keep sending in more and more troops.’
‘Hundreds of bodies are strewn across the fields. No one picks them up, so the place smells like rotting flesh,’ he says.
Oksana explains to me later as we walk along the trenches how snipers clamber over the top and dig holes in which to lie and wait for their prey, sometimes for hours.
Despite the fact that women make up about one in every five members of Ukraine’s armed forces, Oksana is unconcerned about being the only female in this military unit.
‘Whether you are a man or a woman, it is natural for Ukrainians to defend their homeland,’ she says.
When the war is over, however, Oksana and Stanislas say they intend to put down their weapons and resume more normal lives. ‘Right now, we have five cats, but after the triumph, we’ll get five children.’