Svitlana spent 18 years teaching children at a school in Ukraine’s Rivne region. In 2023, she decided to join the military, drawing on her training as a paramedic.

“My first qualification was in education — I trained as a biology teacher. My second was in medicine, as a paramedic. I decided it was probably time. I had the skills and knowledge. I thought I should go,” she said.

Svitlana remembers a moving moment when her pupils and their parents came to see her off outside the military recruitment office.

“It was pouring with rain outside the recruitment office. The men were all standing by the bus, and I was there with my kit bag. Then this huge crowd appeared — so many children and adults. It turned out all my pupils had gathered. They had been allowed to leave their lessons, their clubs, wherever they were. They all came out in the rain to see me off. Everyone was crying,” Svitlana recalled.

She is now an instructor at the individual training school of Operational Command West’s training centre.

For three years, she has been “teaching grown-up children”, as she puts it — teaching them how to survive and save lives.