A mysterious female sniper has been dubbed Ukraine's new 'Lady Death' after vowing to defeat the Russians in the ongoing war.
Known only by the codename Charcoal, the decorated but masked woman returned to the frontline 35th infantry brigade of Rear Admiral Mykhailo Ostrogradsky with a pledge to "take them all out".
This echoes Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a legendary Ukrainian sniper who manage to kill 309 Nazis during World War II and was given her country’s highest award, the Hero of the Soviet Union.
Known as 'Lady Death of the Red Army', she's recognised as the most successful female sniper of all time, appearing on postage stamps and meeting the three Allied leaders Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin.
Now, Charcoal - whose face remains partly covered to protect her identity - has followed in Pavlichenko's footsteps with her defiant stance.
"We must take them all out," she has pledged according to the Times.
"These people are not human beings. Even the fascists were not as vile as these orcs. We must defeat them."
She also vowed to fight Vladimir Putin 's invaders "to the very end".
The sniper joined the Ukrainian marines in 2017 and has fought pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk, in the east of the country.
The news comes as an elite Russian sniper believed to have killed dozens of people before being captured has been pictured relaxing between kills in war-torn Ukraine.
Irina Starikova is understood to have been abandoned by her protectors after getting injured.
The 41-year-old's capture will be a major new blow to Vladimir Putin, as the sharpshooter is alleged to have over 40 kills to her name.
She is codenamed Bagheera after Rudyard Kipling’s black panther in The Jungle Book, but there have been misleading accounts of her true identity.
The mother-of-two was found wounded on a battlefield in Ukraine, but she is not from Serbia as some accounts say, nor was she a nun-turned-sniper.
In fact the captured sniper is originally from Donetsk and has two daughters - Valeria, 11, and Yulia, nine.
She served with the Russian separatists in her home region - which had been fighting Kyiv since 2014.
Ukrainian armed forces announced Starikova's capture saying she "shot our prisoners in 2014".
Her capture has also been confirmed by Giorgi Revishvili, a researcher at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.
He tweeted “Ukrainian forces captured infamous sniper fighting on the side of ORDLO, call sign Bagira” - which refers to how the breakaway Russian-speaking regions are called.
He added that she is allegedly responsible for “killing 40 Ukrainians including civilians”.
