Mother and Son Serve in a Reconnaissance Company

Family from Vinnytsia went on the Russo-Ukrainian war as a reconnaissance personnel.

A husband went to defend Ukraine in 2015, she in 2016, and a son in 2017. All of them went in a reconnaissance company. Olena Kukla is on the war for the fifth year. In 2019, she signed a contract for another three year. The war took her husband four years ago, he died on the way over in the operation room because of an old unexamined combat wound.

Son, Yaroslav Shynkarenko is currently "People's Hero of Ukraine", she is a communications platoon commander. Several dozens of servicemen are subordinated to her.

"Our task is to be in communications with each soldier in a trench, in order to each of them can report and request help, evacuation," Olena Kukla says.

Today, Olena is serving with her son Yaroslav in the same battalion. Yaroslav signed a contract with the Armed Forces of Ukraine as soon as he turned 18 years old.

Today, he and his mother continue a matter, which their husband and father started. On October 4, Yaroslav received an award "People's Hero of Ukraine". On March 4 this year, he was driving a vehicle of reconnaissance battalion commander when a team was come under a missile strike.

"A missile is passing by from us in one second. I instinctively steered the vehicle, the missile passed in one centimeter from us," Yaroslav Shynkarenko remembers.

That day, Olena Kukla as a signal woman knew that the team where was her son came under the shelling that there were wounded and killed servicemen but she did not know whether her son alive.

In Bohuslav where Olena from is, she left parents and two daughters. She see them only one month in a year.