‘Women are the best snipers’: the elite soldier hunting naive Russians
‘Cuckoo’ comes from a proud tradition of Ukrainian snipers — and Putin is sending poorly trained men into her crosshairs
From her stakeout a kilometre away, the Ukrainian sniper trained her rifle on the gap blasted through the colliery’s concrete perimeter, waiting for the Russians to reappear.
The 47th Brigade markswoman had fired ten .338 calibre bullets at the wall behind which five men were sheltering. One had collapsed, apparently injured, before rousing himself and limping towards cover, minus his gun. The Russian raiding party, part of a wider assault on Avdiivka, was in disarray.
In spring the foliage disrupted the sniper’s line of sight; in summer the variations in temperature deceived her heat-seeking scope; in autumn the wind blew too briskly.
But the advent of the colder months — when the trees offered little protection bar the occasional clump of mistletoe, and human
