I first met Kateryna in February 2022, just before the war began. A dark-haired Ukrainian woman in her mid-20s, she was wearing a patterned dress and sipping a glass of red wine in a trendy café called The Journalist in central Kyiv.
The second time, more than a year later, and working as an assistant chaplain and press liaison for Ukraine’s battle-hardened 80th Air Assault Brigade, she is dressed in green and black combat fatigues and a helmet as she drives me in an armoured jeep towards the frontlines in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. “Tom, now we go straight to Bakhmut!” she tells me, turning around with a mischievous smile on her face as she refers to the infamous frontline city that has become the war’s most long-standing and deadly battlefield.
