At 19, she lost the man she was supposed to marry. A year later, she lost her father too.
Yaryna Chuchman-Myno dreamed of architecture, her own tattoo studio, a wedding in summer 2022 and a quiet life in Lviv.
Instead, she became an officer and combat drone pilot.
Ivan, 28, volunteered on February 24, 2022.
His last message came on April 1:
“Okay, sunshine. Eat and take care.”
The next day, a mortar strike killed him.
Yaryna couldn’t bring herself to identify his body. She didn’t want that image to be her last memory of him.
So she chose to fight.
She entered the National Defence University, became a junior lieutenant and commanded a strike-drone platoon of 14 men.
The youngest was 18. The oldest was 50.
They doubted her.
She proved them wrong.
She flew combat drones, dropping munitions on russian fortified positions.
Then came March 25, 2023.
Her father, an ATO veteran, was killed by russian artillery near Bakhmut.
Yaryna was 20.
Today, at 24, she carries Ivan’s callsign — “Blast” — and his surname, Myno.
She says she will keep it even if she marries.
Because that name belongs to the two men who shaped her: her father, who gave her a steel character, and Ivan, who made her kinder.
Today she helps families of the missing and fallen.
Because she knows what it means to wait.
What it means to search.
And what it means to lose.
“I wasn’t born for war either. But I definitely don’t want to live under the tricolor. That’s not what we are dying for.”
She is not fighting because she was born for war.
She is fighting because she refuses to surrender her country.
She is fighting for two.