First female Russian soldier is killed

A FRONTLINE medic has become the first female Russian soldier to be killed during the fighting in Ukraine.

The death of Sergeant Valentina Galatova, 27, in a mortar attack in the battle for Mariupol last month has only now been confirmed.

Her husband – also a soldier in the pro-Russian forces of Ukraine’s breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) – was killed in cross-border fighting against Ukrainian troops last year.

The death of the mother of one – a rifle battalion paramedic – leaves their eight-year-old son orphaned. Galatova and her husband had settled in Donetsk after Vladimir Putin first invaded Ukraine in 2014. After Russia attacked again in February, she volunteered for the DPR armed forces. Russia bans women from frontline combat roles, so she was put to work as a medic instead. On April 14 she was killed ‘while performing a combat mission’, according to Russian media in her home town of Voronezh.