19 February 2024 , 17:06
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A woman crowned Ukraine's deadliest sniper has warned Vladimir Putin that he will be assassinated by his own bodyguards.
Olena Bilozerska, 44, became a national hero in her home country after terrifying footage showed her slaughtering two Russian soldiers from distance. Olena, who worked as a journalist in Kyiv before the conflict, signed up for a role in the Ukrainian armed forces back in 2014 as a volunteer sniper. In 2018, she joined as an officer and spent two years as a commander in Donbas.
In 2020, she briefly retired but returned to the frontline after Putin's invasion. She now serves in the Artan Special Units - an elite squad leading the battle against the enemy.
Speaking to The Sun, Olena said she thinks Putin won't "live to see the international tribunal where he will be judged". She added: "When the Russian elite realises that Putin's rule is becoming unprofitable for them, he will be poisoned or otherwise killed by his own henchmen. Of course I would kill him if I could - but it's unrealistic for me to get such a chance. The next Russian leader will not be a friend of Ukraine. But he will have to seek peace with the Western countries in order to rebuild war-torn Russia, and therefore will make some concessions."
She rose to fame after a video emerged of her picking off Russian soldiers through her sights (YouTube)She said the warmonger is best described as "inadequate", as she raised fears that he will likely set his eyes on Moldova, Poland, the Baltic states and Finland if he is victorious in Ukraine.
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At the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014, Olena was station in Dnipro, where she was engaged in a campaign to allow Ukrainian women to enlist in the military. Women were finally allowed to join in 2016. She became an officer two years later in 2018.
In 2020, she went back to life as a civilian and started a career as a writer and veterans' advocate, soon rising to celebrity status. She penned a best-selling book in the war torn country named Diary of an Illegal Soldier.
She said that February 24 was the most difficult day of the war thus far, which was the same day Putin's boys stormed the capital of Kyiv. She feared that if the invaders had taken hold of the capital, they would surely have murdered her parents.
The fact that they started with a city that Ukrainians held dear, it made it easier for civilians to get behind the war effort and sign up themselves.