Meet Oleksandr Shamshur. The 41-year-old Ukrainian hairdresser and citizen soldier is one of tens of thousands of Ukrainians who have picked up arms to help repel the almost year-long Russian invasion of their sovereign nation. Before the war, he was an Army Reservist. Shortly after Putin initiated his “special military operation” in Ukraine, Shamshur learned that his military base had been destroyed. He joined the territorial defense force and immediately began distributing food to civilians and helping to evacuate them from dangerous areas.

Regarding his sudden switch to military life, Shamshur said,

“I wanted to defend people, and it is not because it is a duty; it is because I want to do it. What else could I do? It did not even occur to me to run away or hide somewhere. No.” 

Oleksandr keeps the conversation light when working with clients in his salon. He wants to keep them happy and take their minds off the war. Screenshot from YouTube and Reuters.

With over 300 days of practice under their belts, Ukrainian armed forces keep getting better and better and bringing down Russian missiles and drones. His Kyiv-based unit counts among their members a lawyer and a few businessmen. Ordinary people. Using sophisticated thermal cameras and rangefinders, they track Iranian Shahed-136 drones, doing their best to down them restored with World War II-era machine guns. Oleksandr recalled how during one night watch in December of last year, his unit shot down two drones from a rooftop in Kyiv.