NEAR BUCHA, Ukraine — The suburban moms in army-green fatigues assemble their rifles in a cold forest outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
Valentyna trained as a veterinarian. Inna is a teacher. Tetiana used to be a water utilities inspector. The others include a real estate agent, a nanny and a pastry chef.
On a Saturday afternoon, they shoot at targets in a muddy range. Valentyna grins after she nails a shot.
"Feels good," she says, "especially after what we've been through."
The women call themselves the "Combat Witches of Bucha." The name comes from a badge one of the women have depicting a witch with weapons, though the women say the name isn't important. Their mission is. They are part of a female air defense unit training to shoot down drones in the suburbs of Kyiv. They live in those suburbs, where occupying Russian troops killed, tortured and raped residents early in the 2022 invasion. NPR is not disclosing the women's last names at the request of the Ukrainian military.
Almost three years later, the women's trauma and grief still run deep.
"This unit is our medicine," Tetiana says.
"Save our children"
Tetiana lives in Irpin, a city about 16 miles from Kyiv. In early March 2022, Russians stormed into the city, occupying part of it. Tetiana's brother, a police officer, helped bring in supplies to Ukraine's beleaguered defenders. Her husband, Oleksandr, a journalist, enlisted in the military as part of the local territorial defense.
Tetiana and Oleksandr met through a group for car lovers. It was a second marriage for both. She had a young daughter, and he had raised three girls from his first marriage.
"He was an incredible partner," she says.
When the Russians invaded, his two oldest daughters lived with their partners. He and Tetiana lived with her daughter and his youngest, who were still teenagers. As Russian troops came closer to Irpin, Ukraine's government evacuated residents. Tetiana hurriedly packed suitcases for herself and the girls. Her husband rushed to embrace them one last time.
"My husband told me, 'My task is to save our city. Yours is to save our children,' " she says.
Tetiana and their young daughters took an evacuation train to western Ukraine. A Spanish friend then helped take Tetiana and the girls to Spain. Oleksandr called every day. Then, one day, the calls stopped. Walking along a seaside promenade with their daughters, Tetiana was gripped by a cold emptiness in her heart.
"I went back to the place we were staying and cried," she says. "At 3:30 that morning, someone called me and said my husband was dead."
The next day, she found out her brother had been killed, too.
She asks me to shut off the recorder as her eyes fill with tears.
"I'm a soldier now," she says, her voice ragged, "and soldiers aren't supposed to cry."
An unimaginable choice
Valentyna and her best friend, Inna, live in Nemishayeve, a village near the city of Bucha. The city is known worldwide as the site of a Russian massacre early in the 2022 invasion. The names of hundreds of local residents are on a memorial wall in Bucha.
Valentyna and Inna met years ago, before the war, after their youngest children, both boys, became friends in preschool. The two women were both older mothers who grew up during Soviet times. They laughed at the same dark-humor jokes.
"Our kids hung out, we talked, and soon we realized we were cut from the same cloth," Valentyna says.
"We became inseparable," Inna says. "It was like we'd known each other forever."
When Russian troops occupied Bucha and surrounding villages at the end of February 2022, the women were caught off guard.
Valentyna and her family ran into their basement and, soon, panicked neighbors from nearby houses joined them there, too.
"There was barely enough room for us," she says.
Inna and her family decided to drive to another village about 60 miles away, where Inna's grandparents had a tiny old hut.
"It was largely abandoned," she says, "but it had firewood, a cellar and potatoes."
The Russian army never got to the village where Inna had fled. Valentyna, meanwhile, spent more than a week in the basement as fighting raged outside. She heard women considering unimaginable choices, like killing themselves and their own children to avoid being raped and tortured by Russian troops.
"Even now, talking about it, I remember the desperation," she says, wiping away tears. "All that sorrow and anxiousness is still just beneath the surface."
Her youngest son was 8 years old at the time. She panicked about where to hide him. She managed to send a message to Inna.
"She told me, 'If anything happens to me, please take in my son and raise him,' " Inna says. "And I told her, 'Of course I will.' And then I said, 'Valentyna, my dear, I promise you we will raise our children together.' "
"And, thank God," she adds, "that's what we're doing."
A lifeline
After Ukrainian troops pushed Russian troops out of the Kyiv suburbs in late March 2022, Tetiana returned home, leaving her daughters in Spain for their safety. She advocated to secure benefits from the Ukrainian government for families who had lost loved ones during the war. She helped transport supplies to the front line in honor of her husband.
But her emotions, she says, were still raw.
"I was going through a very tough time," she says.
Meanwhile, drone attacks on Kyiv increased, especially over the last year. In response, Bucha's territorial defense created a volunteer air defense unit to shoot down the drones. Those who joined could work part time.
Tetiana saw an advertisement for the unit while scrolling through her phone last summer.
"I immediately dialed the number," she says. "I got an interview and then the job."
Valentyna and Inna saw it, too, and signed up together.
"We were just sitting and crying at home, and that's no good," Valentyna says. "And now we've got skills. We know how to hold a gun, how to shoot a gun. Maybe we don't know how to kill the enemy, but that's coming up next."
"With my girls, I feel alive"
The Combat Witches of Bucha currently has about 50 volunteer members who work at least three days a week in their base in the forest outside Kyiv. On one recent afternoon, a training drone flies overhead, over trenches and burnt military vehicles, remnants of the Russian occupation.
Valentyna, Inna, Tetiana and a blond woman in braids named Olena jump into a truck outfitted with a recoil-operated machine gun called the Maxim, the first fully automatic machine gun in the world. They drive through the forest until they reach an open field, where a male soldier takes notes on how quickly they put the gun together. This is the main gun they are supposed to use to shoot down Russian drones, something the women say they're itching to do. Tetiana says they haven't had the chance yet during their patrols at night, when Russia launches most drone attacks.
"They often don't fly over here," she says. "We can see them, but they're not in our sector."
Destroying Russian drones isn't the only mission, she says. Tetiana says the unit's camaraderie has helped her emerge from a grief so deep that it deadened her.
"With my girls," Tetiana says, "I feel alive."
A second family
Tetiana calls the Combat Witches of Bucha her second family. While chatting at a café in Irpin, her phone buzzes repeatedly with messages from the other witches.
"It's my day off and they're checking in on me," she says. "They want to go out later."
Tetiana says they meet at cafes and restaurants, go to movies and vacation together. When one woman has a problem, the others — "my sisters," she calls them — will always have her back.
"My car broke down recently, and one of my sisters just gave me her car and said, 'take it and drive it as long as you need to,' " Tetiana says. "I've been driving it for weeks now."
Valentyna and Inna say they feel like being part of this team has also transformed them. They sleep better and cry less. They make plans for the future, even as the war grinds on. They aren't afraid anymore.
"Everything is still scary," Valentyna says, "but training with this unit makes us feel better."
"Our sons are proud, too," Inna adds. "They brag to their friends about us."
After their shift, the two best friends sit side by side in a café in Bucha, sipping cappuccinos. Valentyna recalls how tightly she and Inna hugged each other when they reunited after Ukrainian troops forced the Russian soldiers out of Bucha. How they both wept, relieved they had escaped being captured or worse.
"Look at us now," Inna says. "No longer the hunted, but the hunters."
Polina Lytvynova contributed reporting from the Kyiv region.
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