Ukraine's deadliest female sniper who has 10 confirmed kills vows to take on Putin again and tells how she shot three Russian separatists in one night as they tried to storm her trench

 Olena Bilozerska, 42, credited with at least 10 confirmed ‘kills’ in the trenches of Donbas, told MailOnline she would be at the front lines again within hours to face the Russians.

And this chilling video posted online of her picking off her targets through a thermal imaging night sight in 2017 shows the ruthless efficiency of her deadly craft.

On the soundtrack, as a bird flutters above the silent enemy trench 200m away, she is surprised to see two men crawling out of their position.

‘It was the night of Ukrainian Independence Day anniversary in August 2017,’ she recalled, ‘and these Cossacks must have assumed we were lying drunk in our trenches celebrating.

‘I felt something interesting was going to happen when they started getting out of a trench and passing weapons to each other.’

The sobering footage shows one man crawling out of the trench into the crosshairs of Olena’s rifle. Unable to believe her eyes, she exclaims to her comrade ‘Ah, he got out! Look, look, look, look -crawling! B*****d.’Twenty seconds later, the image becomes more focused and her first shot rings out, targeted at the enemy soldier’s torso, swiftly followed by two more rounds.

After the screen clears following the gun’s muzzle flash, another soldier is seen leaning over his comrade and he is similarly dispatched.

Shortly afterwards, another enemy combatant is seen emerging above the level of the trench and he is felled with a single shot, falling lifelessly backwards out of sight.

‘I shot three of them that night,’ said Olena. Two of them were what we call “cargo 200” [an old Soviet military term for dead, referring to the labels put on coffins] and the third was “cargo 300” [wounded].’

Five years on, Olena – who was then a volunteer fighter, but later joined the Ukrainian Marine Corps, has no qualms about any of the men she has killed or wounded in battle.

Olena – who was then a volunteer fighter, but later joined the Ukrainian Marine Corps, has no qualms about any of the men she has killed or wounded in battle

‘I felt excited, because that night, a unit of six people came out of their trenches for the two of us - it doesn’t happen every day.

‘Moral anguish about the "murder of a human" was invented by people far from the war. An armed enemy is not a person, but a target.

‘You take up a weapon against my country - that's it, you're a target. If you don’t take him out in time, he might kill you or one of your comrades.

‘If I didn't shoot in time and the target hid, that's when I feel angry at myself for missing my chance. And if the target is hit, I feel the pleasure of a job well done.’

She said she spares no thoughts for those unfortunate enough to come into her line of fire.

‘When the enemy crawls towards our position to kill me, does he think if I have a husband, parents, or kids?’ she said.

‘Of course not. And I don't bother myself with stupid things either. That stuff is for books and movies.

‘In real life, anyone who thinks along those lines in battle is already as good as dead.’

Bilzerska (pictured) says she spares no thoughts for those unfortunate enough to come into her line of fire. ‘When the enemy crawls towards our position to kill me, does he think if I have a husband, parents, or kids?’ she said

She came very close to being shot herself one night when a machine gun tracer bullet grazed her cheek, with the phosphorus chemical which allows the round to be seen at night, searing her flesh.

‘I don’t know if someone was looking after me that night,’ she said, ‘but we all have our share of luck, I guess.’

She is scathing about Hollywood’s depiction of snipers: ‘In the movies, it looks as if a sniper sees the eyes of a living human. But you cannot see the eyes. It's hard to tell if the person is large or small.

‘You just see a silhouette of an armed person and you fire at it. That's all… if you miss, you will feel as if you've lost.’

After the Independence Day incident, her husband Valeriy Voronov, a regular soldier who was beside her in the trench, collected up the cartridge casings and, following an old sniper tradition from WWI, had one made into a ring for her.

Olena, from Kyiv, is something of a celebrity in Ukraine, having written a best-selling book called ‘Diary of an Illegal Soldier’, referring to the fact that for the first few years of her service, volunteers like her were not technically allowed to fight on the front lines, but that law was changed in 2016.

She was well-known even before the war as her oppositional journalism found her under threat of imprisonment by the old hardline regime of Viktor Yanukovych, deposed in the 2014 Maidan Revolution.

She also writes poetry but finds no contradiction between that and fighting, saying: ‘A creative nature requires perfectionism in everything, and this helps a lot in my work. Of course I don’t write poetry now though.’

Olena, from Kyiv, is something of a celebrity in Ukraine, having written a best-selling book called ‘Diary of an Illegal Soldier’

Although she was demobilised from the marines in 2020, she and her husband are both members of Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Services, and, along with thousands of other reservists, ready to deploy should the need arise.

She believes that Putin will not order an invasion and his troop build-up is ‘pressure and intimidation’

But along with many other Ukrainians, she is thankful for the support that Boris Johnson and the UK has given her nation, both with words and deeds, in the shape of at least 2,000 NLAW anti-tank weapons which have been sent.

‘Ukrainians are now very grateful to Britain for military assistance,’ she said, ‘and I’ve seen lots of people writing on social networks "God save the Queen"’

She still keeps up her marksmanship with regular practice with ‘Halia’, the traditional Ukrainian girl’s name she christened her Zbroyar Z-10 rifle.

‘A weapon is a living thing -- It has a soul,’ she said. ‘There is a Ukrainian story about “Spoilt Halia”, which is why I chose that name – the rifle is always being cleaned and adjusted and looked after like a spoilt child.

‘But she does what I ask her to do, and if the Russians decide to come, I’ll be only too happy to introduce them to Halia.’