Oleksandr Shamshur is 41 years old and, since the war broke out in Ukraine, he has never thought of leaving his country. To fight the “invader” he has decided to become a “drone hunter”, without renouncing, however, his real job: the hairdresser. His story is one of the many stories that demonstrate the strength of a people, the Ukrainian one, which has never surrendered to the Russian invasion. Indeed, he fights relentlessly, in the hope of regaining possession of his territories, chasing the desire for freedom that vanished into thin air almost a year ago. The news is reported by the agency Reuters.
Today Oleksandr Shamshur is a hairdresser by day and a “drone hunter” by night. He takes pride in what he does and is among the tens of thousands of volunteers who help defend Ukraine’s skies from Russian attack. Incidentally, as the first anniversary of the February 24 Russian invasion approaches, Ukraine is becoming increasingly adept at shooting down Russian missiles and drones fired at cities far from the front lines.
Members of his territorial defense unit, including a lawyer and a businessman, respond to air raid alerts in and around the capital Kiev, trying to shoot down Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones, with a restored machine gun from the second World War. “I am a very happy person. Why? Because I’m defending my country, I’m defending our Ukrainian people,” says Shamshur as he views the capital’s moonlit skyline through a thermal imaging camera with a rangefinder from his position on a rooftop.
Nearby, another fighter is fixing the green barrels of the Soviet-made “Maxim” machine gun. Shamshur explains that she has never stopped doing her real job: «During the day I can come to the beauty salon and work with people, do what I know, cut hair and talk to clients», explaining that as a civilian «I don’t I never thought of running away and hiding somewhere” when tens of thousands of Russian armored forces raided Ukraine.
“With the enemy at the gates, I had to do something, I had to act defensively,” he explains. “During the night of December 29-30, my rooftop unit shot down two drones over Kiev,” Shamshur said. His team also passed on the skills they learned to other units. Shamshur sports several badges on his camouflage uniform, including one, “Drone Hunters” in English and another in Ukrainian, “Ronin”, a feudal Japanese warrior, which he adopted as his war name. When Russia invaded, Shamshur – an army reservist before the war – learned that his military base had already been destroyed by Russian bombing so he joined the CES Territorial Defense, initially delivering food to civilians and helping people evacuate.
At work in her salon, still wearing her military khaki as she cuts a client’s hair, she repeats that she «tries not to talk to her clients about war, calling it ‘dark’ in contrast to the ‘light’ of the peaceful part of her life» .