- Mortar platoon commander Olga Bigar is better known in Ukraine by her callsign “Witch.”
- Bigar was thrust into the fighting almost immediately after volunteering last year.
- Now helping defend Bakhmut, she told Insider of her journey from civilian to fighter.
Ukrainian officer Olga Bigar will not tell anyone how she received the callsign “Witch” until the war is over.
“But when I am asked,” she says with a grin, “I say it’s because I can set the sky on fire.”
“Witch,” a mortar platoon commander in Ukraine’s 241st Brigade of the Territorial Defense Forces (TDF), has emerged as one of the individual soldiers in the current conflict who have caught the public’s imagination.
Having signed up the day after Russia launched its attack last year, Bigar was later thrust into the grinding battle for Bakhmut, gaining a fierce reputation on the war’s bloodiest front.
Boasting a TikTok following of more than 120,000, Bigar, 31, has become a talisman of the conflict, not only as one of Ukraine’s 60,000 female soldiers, but also of the spirited defense presented by the thousands of civilians who signed up to fight without hesitation.
Bigar spoke to Insider via an interpreter from an undisclosed location away from the front line in April. She described how the war transformed her from civilian lawyer to a seasoned fighter leading her own platoon.
Insider independently confirmed her present role, and her presence at the locations of some of the exploits she described, with the TDF.
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