A Russian sniper reportedly detained by Kyiv’s forces after 40-plus kills had previously married a rebel commander who claimed to have shot more than 100 Ukrainians, it has been revealed.
Irina Starikova, codenamed Bagheera, is a mother-of-two who operated in the separatist Donbas area of Ukraine.
She was shown on pictures relaxing between “kills” as a highly respected sniper among pro-Russians.
Starikova, 41, is now supposedly detained in Ukraine and described as having “blood on her hands”.
Her fate is not clear.
The female sniper is originally from Donetsk and has two daughters - Valeria, 11, and Yulia, nine.
Now it has emerged that she married 43-year-old Alexander Ogrenich - aka Gorynych, a Slavic fairy tale dragon - who was on the run from Belarus where he had a string of convictions and had served time in jail.
Want all the latest news and analysis from Ukraine? Sign up to our World News Bulletin here
In the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, he has headed a separatist “intelligence unit” from around 2014.
"Yes, I've killed a lot,” he said in one interview.
“The figure is over one hundred.
“And if you could see the enemy in the scope, what would you do?”
He sees his enemy as “Ukrainian fascists”.
A video shows the couple on a “day off” from killing in 2016.
“Today is our day off and because today is our six-month anniversary,” he said.
“I decided to give you a big present.
“I love you very much.
“Today you and I will have a rest, and tomorrow, as always.”
She replies: “Same as always. Service is service.”
He told her: “And anyway, you see how great things are between us….”
“And will be better,” she said.
He told her: “The war will end and it will be even better.”
He admitted that before the current war civilians on both sides of a demarcation line were caught in attacks by the pro-Russians he fought alongside.
He said in an interview with a Belarus news site six years ago: “Of course, peaceful people are suffering.
“We cannot be perfect. It happens when there is a mass strike - well, you can't get away from it, you know yourself that this is war.
“There are casualties through our fault too, I won't deny it.
"If it wasn't for Russia, we would all be dead here.”
Ogrenich admitted he had a criminal record before fleeing Belarus to the Donbas.
“I won't hide it, I have convictions. I was convicted for theft and fraud,” he said in one interview.
He did not comment on a claim he had committed murder in a “crime if passion”.
“You know, like fraud - I took money, said that I would give it back, but I didn't. That kind of thing. All in all I spent eight years in prison," he said.
His whereabouts are not currently clear.
Both had been married previously before their wedding in around 2015.
The Mirror told yesterday how her capture will be a major new blow to Vladimir Putin. Starikova also claims to have killed 40 Ukrainians.
She is codenamed Bagheera after Rudyard Kipling’s black panther in The Jungle Book, but there have been misleading accounts of her true identity.
The mother-of-two was found wounded on a battlefield in Ukraine, but she is not from Serbia as some accounts say, nor was she a nun-turned-sniper.
