Yulia Tolopa

Yulia Tolopa (call sign "Valkyrie"), (Юлия Толопа, "Валькирия"; Юлія Толопа, "Валькірія"; born 1995) is a Russian-born female volunteer who fought for Ukraine in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Tolopa grew up as a Russian nationalist and Cossack and at the age of eighteen became a Russian Federation champion of hand to hand combat.

Yulia Tolopa was born in 1995 and raised in Podkumok, Stavropol Krai, a rural settlement near Pyatigorsk, in southern Russia just north of the Caucasus.

Her paternal grandfather and great-grandfather were Ukrainian, from Zaporizhzhia.

She and her three brothers had a difficult family life.

Tolopa stopped living with her mother at the age of 14 and her father died when she was eighteen.

Tolopa spent her childhood with Russian nationalists, who taught her how to fight.

She learned to shoot guns and trained at the military sports club "Yermak", learning mixed martial arts and cage fighting.

She joined the modern Don Cossack forces of "Ataman" Nikolai Kozitsyn, that would later take an active role against Ukraine.

At the age of 18, she became a Russian Federation champion of hand to hand combat (штурмовому рукопашному бою).

She studied in Kislovodsk Medical College for two years, but never completed her medical education.

Her nationalist mentors had raised Tolopa to believe that Ukrainians and Belarusians were her Slavic brothers, and initially they supported the EuroMaidan.

Tolopa defended her hand to hand combat title on 29 March and then on 2 April, she took a train to Kyiv to offer help, or just see the Maidan for herself.

Once there, she befriended Ukrainians, and joined their side.

First she participated in the remaining EuroMaidan encampment, then when Russian troops entered Sloviansk she volunteered to fight against the Russians.

She went to Kyiv to see the 2014 Ukrainian revolution firsthand.

Joining the Ukrainian volunteer Aidar Battalion, she fought against some of her former friends.

Her family and Russian media declared her a traitor, and the Russian government threatened her with imprisonment.

After a year she left the military to give birth to a daughter.

Tolopa's nationalist friends turned against Ukraine during the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and the war in Donbas, but in June 2014, at the age of eighteen, Tolopa joined the recently formed Aidar Battalion, and went to fight in the Donbas.

Tolopa said she fought for Ukraine for an ideal, while her former friends were paid to fight against Ukraine.

Her military call sign, "Valkyrie", was a name she already had from Russia, given in a pagan temple of the Slavic Native Faith.

In June the LNR People's Militia were already distributing a poster with Tolopa's photo, warning she was a killer-sniper from Lipetsk.

Tolopa denied being a sniper, saying she was a rifleman and from July served as the commander of a captured BMP-2, an infantry fighting vehicle.

On 12 July 2014, she suffered a heavy concussion and three broken ribs, when the civilian car she was in hit a land mine.

The driver and another passenger were killed immediately, while she was thrown clear.

The last passenger died from his wounds in hospital.

In August 2014, Oleh Liashko, leader of the Ukrainian Radical Party, visited the Aidar Battalion, appeared on television with Tolopa, called her a true patriot, and said he would request Ukrainian nationality for her.

This caused her harm when the video was aired on NTV Russian television, as part of a story about her.

The NTV story focused on how she grew up, and what caused her to betray her origin by fighting for another country.

After the Russian media coverage, her family was threatened and stopped speaking to her.

Her maternal uncle, an official of the Federal Security Service (FSB) declared he would bring her back to Russia from Ukraine.

The Russian authorities opened three criminal cases against her, for extremism, terrorism, and mercenaryism, with a total potential jail sentence of 36 years.

From 2015, Ukrainian media also began regular stories about her as a rare Russian woman fighting for Ukraine.

Afterward, she returned to fighting, first with the Donbas Battalion, then with the 16th battalion of the 58th Independent Motorized Infantry Brigade of the Ukraine regular army, when women were officially allowed to take part in combat.

Ukrainian bureaucracy for years delayed giving her Ukrainian nationality and made her fear deportation back to Russia.

Tolopa finally received Ukrainian nationality in 2021.

She was officially listed as a radiotelephone operator; until 2016, women were not formally allowed to serve in Ukrainian forces in combat positions.

At least once, at Lutuhyne, Tolopa fought against the Don Cossack troops which she had formerly been part of.

She was wounded twice and suffered concussions seven times.