Heavy is from a village in Sumy region that was occupied by Russian troops in the first days of the war. She lost people close to her, but she did not want to talk about the details. She joined the army in September and volunteered for the 3rd Assault Brigade a few weeks ago. She has already been in combat once. Asked why she had volunteered for a combat unit, Heavy said she thought it would be "interesting".
"Assault units are going to be the first ones to liberate our citizens, so I want to be part of it," she explained. As for the counteroffensive, she said: "I can't wait. I am excited."
Heavy said her platoon leader, call sign Darwin, likes to tell her: "Fear is contagious, but so is courage."
Darwin took part in a raid behind Russian lines just over a week ago, to disrupt supply routes in woodland south of Bakhmut. Video footage from a camera mounted on his helmet showed an intense exchange of gunfire among the trees that ended with images of Russians dead in the trenches they had been defending.
Some of the first battalion's new recruits had come straight from training in the UK, but the officers here say that is not enough to prepare them for the fight they are about to face.
"We have a certain experience that can't be taught in the British army training camps," the company senior sergeant, call sign Uncle Fyodor, said. "We train where there is similar landscape, the same treelines and villages."
"The European training is a bit different," Horbatenko said. "They do have experience but it is fighting the Taliban, and that is different from fighting a regular army like the Russians. So our soldiers have to retrain here."
"The Russians are a professional army, and they definitely know how to build defensive lines and dig trenches. They do that perfectly," the battalion commander said. "Their equipment is not modern at all, but there is a huge amount of it and it's quite enough to carry on this war. The only way for us to win is to be more professional and more technically advanced."
