“When the war is over I want to open a cafe in kyiv.” This was the wish that Valentina Nahorna had, as she revealed to the Observer, for her future after the end of the war in Ukraine. He will no longer fulfill it. The nurse of the Third Assault Brigade, a branch of the Azov Battalion, He died at the age of 29 on the front line. in the service of the Ukrainian army, in Donbass, victim of a Russian attack against Ukrainian troops, The Observer confirmed with Ukrainian army sources.

“Valentina Nahorna was one of the featured stories in the Observador multimedia report.”Wagner: Inside Putin’s war machine“, which recently received the Gazeta Multimédia award and which gave rise to the book Wagner: Putin’s war machine (Chinese Ink, September 2024). The Observer met with the nurse in the region (Donbass) where she ended up dying, near Bakhmut and the front, where the fighting between Ukraine and Russia is most intense.

HE nickname Valentina’s name was Valkyria, the name by which she was known and by which she is remembered among the soldiers. “Valkyrie was an example of dignity and strength. she always seek to improve your skills to help those in need even more effectively. “His path is an example for all of us: the path of courage, determination and constant advancement,” wrote the Third Assault Brigade.

According to the Ukrainian press, which already reported the death, the head of the battalion’s medical service, Victoria Kovacs, and volunteer Lilia Matveeva reported that Valentina died along with her boyfriend, Danylo Bersek, who was a soldier in the Third Assault Brigade. “They fought together, they loved together, they will be together on the shield… May their souls always be together. Always online! Valkyrie and Berserk,” said Lilia Matveeva quoted by the Ukrainian press.

At the end of December 2023, when the Observer report was published, Valentyna Nahorna published it on her social networks, through which she had become a small star in the Ukrainian army, with more than 23 thousand followers.

You can review the full report here:

Wagner. Inside Putin’s war machine

Valentyna Nahorna, the manicurist who the war turned into a surgeon

Valentina Nahorna met with the Observer on a hot afternoon at the end of August 2023. She began by asking that nothing identifying the space be photographed and the conversation ended up taking place in a concrete shelter. The nurse of the Azov brigade dealt with emergency situations that arose from nearby fighting, in the Bakhmut area. She performed sutures and other trauma procedures primarily on Ukrainian soldiers, but she was also called upon to care for the enemy: she treated “a Wagner dozen.”

He later revealed to the Observer that he had a moral dilemma: “I honestly have no desire to help them, because if they came to our land, they would basically have to stay here,” he confesses. But then a sense of mission emerged: “I try not to think and just do what needs to be done.” The nurse, who was treated as a “doctor” by the other soldiers, assured: the Russians “receive exactly the same treatment as our boys.” [os soldados ucranianos]The only difference is that we will only deal with the enemy when our people have already received all the treatment.”

Valentina Nahorna has the nickname Valkyria and posts photos of her medical care on Instagram. When he spoke with the Observer he had 19.1 thousand followers, which was already more than 23 thousand on the day of his death. He shares images of split skulls and gutted abdomens, but always with unwavering confidence: “It’s going to be okay”; “All alive”; “We are working so that he can have breakfast with his wife.” The tone is one of improvement and heroism, which contrasts with the more sadistic side with which he treats the enemy. After the interview, Valentina sent the Observador photographs that she did not upload to the network: they are selfies with fighters from the Wagner group with whom he dealt.

Valentina, as she confessed to the Observer, often managed to obtain “useful information” from enemy patients about “the positions where they were located and the type of equipment they used,” but she confesses that she has no specific instructions from the SBU to extract information. “In general, our boys [dos serviços de inteligência] They take us to another room and they talk there,” he explains.

Azov’s nurse told the Observer that the most “scary” situations she experiences are not those in which she has to “put an intestine inside,” but those in which “they bring your friends in bags.” The road to get there was almost as tortuous as the daily life he lived. Valentina was a manicurist and was free on February 24. “My mother kept screaming that the war had started,” he told the Observer. “I calmly got up, made breakfast, took a shower, packed my backpack and sent a message to my friends in Azov: ‘I’m ready, what do I have to do?’ At 10 in the morning she was already at a base in a recruiting queue, but they told her: “We are not recruiting women.”

The then manicurist, who was studying a pharmaceutical development technique, was sent, after insistence, to a mini first aid course, where she learned the MARCH protocol. From there he went to the front, took several courses and now he is a species. as a front-line surgeon. She only went to her hometowns and complained that she was not valued when she went to kyiv. She even revealed that she felt uncomfortable because Ukrainians in kyiv were leading their lives normally.

At the end of the interview with the Observer, a little over a year ago, Valentina Nahorna rushed to the hidden field hospital where all the wounded in the Bakhmut area were sheltered. I had no plans for the next few months. Not years. “I will remain in the army for many years,” he reiterated, anticipating a long war. But he never stopped dreaming: “When the war is over I want to open a cafeteria in kyiv.” It is a wish that will no longer be fulfilled.

*With Iaroslav Oliinyk