What is your price of freedom? 86 days of heroic defense of Mariupol = 1000 days in captivity We are waiting for them at home. Azov is waiting for them.

Dmytro at a Free Azov demonstration holding a portrait of his fallen friend Oleksandr, Summer 2024. The other friend, whose name is withheld for security reasons, is still in captivity. 9/9

“Older people can be very useful in the military. They’re experienced, they’re patient in different situations, and they’re tolerant towards others. They’re able to do their job calmly. If not the elderly, who else will support the young?” 9/9

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, 70-year-old Tetiana didn’t even think of leaving Azov. She provided medical care to those she could treat without sending them to the hospital. After that, she spent a month inside the encircled Azovstal steel plant, working at the medical station and in the kitchen. Tetiana had an effective psychological protection method — she worked so intensively that her exhaustion made her fall asleep at the end of the day without thinking of anything. Then, she went through the Russian captivity. 6/9

“When the Anti-Terrorist Operation started, I was hurt by all those events — Ilovaisk, Mariupol, Debaltseve. I fell deeply in love with Mariupol then and never missed a single news report from the city. At that time, we managed to defend Mariupol. The city was becoming more and more Ukrainian, and I wanted to become a part of its life. I was thinking of moving to Mariupol. The idea wouldn’t let me go until 2015. Then, I got a call from my godson, an Azov serviceman. He asked me if I’d agree to work at their medical station. I told him that was my dream for a whole year. I took a vacation and went to join the guys. It was back in March 2015. I went there and stayed in Mariupol with them.” 5/9

While at war, she met her future husband. “I got pregnant, and I had to come back from Afghanistan in 1981,” Tetiana says. “But I missed that spirit of military brotherhood which I felt among the service members there.” 4/9

In 1980, she went to war-torn Afghanistan to work as a civilian nurse as part of the support services of Soviet forces in the country. She provided medical care to the wounded before their transfer to the hospital without directly participating in combat. 3/9

Tetiana is 72 years old. She is a soldier of the Azov Brigade. The woman is convinced that age restrictions were made up by bureaucrats and that only boring people can give up their desires due to their age. 2/9