love happened

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in Ukrainian on wrote “The best driving practice is when you maneuver between the funnels from air arrivals,” Russian woman Olga Simonova her Facebook, admitting that she got behind the wheel just two months ago. “I think I’ll pass the driving school test when I get there.”

Olga's post was published on September 11, and just two days later Simonova died. She was blown up by an explosive device while performing a combat mission of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Soledar area in the Donetsk region.

She left everything - went to fight

Daria Shavrina, Simonova's university friend, first met Olga in 2005 in the queue to apply to South Ural State University. “She had short purple hair, unusual punk jewelry. I was a little scared of her, ”says Shavrina.

Despite the first impression, Shavrina and Simonova became friends and for five years at the Faculty of Mechanics and Technology became very close.

After graduating from university, Simonova worked as a sales assistant in a sporting goods store. According to Shavrina's memoirs, sport was her real passion. She constantly went to various trainings and competitions, was fond of jiu-jitsu and other martial arts, often celebrated the New Year not at the table in front of the TV, but on mountain hikes. In one of them, in 2014, Simonova met a guy from Ukraine.

“She fell in love,” says Shavrina. “I came from a campaign and kept repeating: “I think that we are wrong, Russia is wrong, I want to leave for my beloved, I will fight.”

At the end of autumn 2014, Simonova bought a one-way ticket to Ukraine. “Olya has never been a girl-girl, and the fact that she went into the army did not surprise me,” says Shavrina. - It was very unexpected that she chose the side of Ukraine, because before that she had never followed the events there, we had never discussed with her who was right and who was wrong on the Maidan. And suddenly she left everything - she went to fight there.

her move Simonova explained by saying that helping Ukraine from Russia is almost impossible and very dangerous. “If you know the truth, if this topic touches you, you cannot help it. The point is that sooner or later you will be imprisoned, no. But just sitting and pretending that it doesn’t touch you is somehow wrong, ” said Simonova. According to Shavrina, Olga's mother was very upset by her daughter's departure, but then she got used to it, "because she understood that having made a decision, she would not change it."

In Ukraine, Simonova got a job as a volunteer paramedic in the Golden Gate Battalion of the Special Purpose Police Patrol Service of Ukraine. She worked in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, helped both on the front line and in local hospitals. Soon Simonova realized that the medical service was not hers: “I wanted something else - because “bekhs” (infantry fighting vehicles. - Approx. “Cold”) were driving nearby , machine guns were firing. I understood that I had enough physical training and endurance to do this [to become a soldier].”

Man found himself in the war

As Shavrina said, they broke up with the man whom Simonova met in 2014, but Olga remained in Ukraine. Simonova's friend Yana Kazakova, who served in the Aidar volunteer battalion in 2014-2015, met her at a meeting of war veterans in eastern Ukraine in 2015. According to Kazakova, then Simonova tried to lead a normal life again: she bought an apartment in Kiev, got a cat and a dog that looked like a German shepherd, went to business courses and planned to open a combat patriotic club with a friend.

“Olya was a volunteer, she was listed as a paramedic, but she did everything that was necessary. She was not paid any money because she is Russian,” Kazakova recalls. Until 2016, the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not enter into contracts with foreigners, so being a volunteer was the only thing Simonova had left. But in 2016, Simonova returned to the army, signing a three-year contract with the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “War gives me, probably, the meaning of life. I don’t admit it to myself, but I’m probably from the category of people who like to fight, ” said Simonova.

“I think a man found himself in the war,” says Kazakova. “It’s hard to get rid of this lifestyle: you don’t have problems with a communal apartment, you don’t think about where to get new shorts for your children, money for a school fee, you don’t think about how to pay a parking fine - you live for one day.” Simonova had no children. “She never wanted a family, she was turned away by life,” says Shavrina. “When I became pregnant with my second child, she jokingly told me that now she had completely lost me.” Simonova explained her unwillingness to start a family by her unwillingness to "acquire what is easy to lose." “As long as there is a war and that’s it,” she said.

Renunciation of Russian citizenship is a fundamental step

In 2017, Simonova received Ukrainian citizenship and became, according to her, the first foreign contract woman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who received a Ukrainian passport during her service. Simonova said that the process of obtaining Ukrainian citizenship was not easy for her because of the bureaucracy, but giving up her Russian passport was a "principled step." In 2018, after training courses, Olga received the rank of sergeant and commander of the BMP.

Ukrainian journalists Simonova told that she did not keep in touch with friends from Chelyabinsk. But, according to Shavrina, Simonova's move did not interfere with their friendship. Until February 24, she even invited a friend to visit Kyiv. “[After the start of the war] Olya was always sending me information that Russia was bombing them, that missiles were flying there,” says Shavrina. I asked her to be careful. She didn’t write to me that she was at the forefront, but I understood that Olya was not one of those who would sit back.”

“Olga was a useful fighter,” Kazakova confirms to Kholod. - I didn’t drink, I didn’t suffer garbage in battle. She gave her best service." Kazakova says that it was difficult for Simonova to get angry, she was a non-conflict person. “Although Olya was terribly angry at the girls who were photographed with a machine gun in their hands with extended nails and eyelashes in a clean uniform,” says Kazakova. Such photographs seemed staged by Simonova. She also expressed her harsh attitude towards women in the army publicly . Olga considered the privileges received by women at the front to be unfair, she was indignant at the fact that some women in the Ukrainian army live in cabins - separate rooms in the sleeping part of the barracks - with hot water, and men freeze in tents. “I never do that. I don’t think that a woman in the army is hungrier or can stand in line less,” she said in an interview with Ukrainian journalists. “This is disgusting towards the boys.”

The war machine was torn in half

The widow of Olga's colleague Natalka Leskiv worked as a doctor in their team. She says that she was even afraid to say hello to Simonova. “She gave the impression of a strict and stern woman who only knows her job,” says Natalka. In April, in the battle near Popasna, Leskiv's husband died. And, unexpectedly for Leskiv, Simonova was one of the first to support her.

Leskiv learned about Simonova's death on September 13 from her brother, who was serving in another unit of her brigade. “They went on the offensive together, and when they talked the day before, my brother got the impression that she had a premonition of something,” says Leskiv. “Her war machine was torn in half before his eyes.”

“Olya understood that she would never return to Russia, we had frank conversations about this,” says Shavrina. - She said that she would be imprisoned as soon as she crossed the border. Law enforcement officers came to us and asked about her. Olya, for security reasons, did not sign her name on social networks, and in the messengers on her avatar she had a picture of a ginger cat.

Her Russian friend Daria Shavrina learned about Simonova's death from a Kholod correspondent. “Is that really her? God! Does her mother know about this?” Shavrina asked. Neither Shavrina nor Kholod managed to find the contact of Simonova's mother.