Servicewoman Nataliia Zotova: "Send those ladies flipping TCR vehicles to do community service – have them deliver draft notices"
She was working as a journalist at the "1+1" TV channel when she decided she was ready to enter public service and went on to head the Social Welfare Department. However, she left that position and joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine after realizing she no longer wanted to review documents submitted by men looking for legal ways to avoid mobilization.
She admits she initially kept quiet about her background as a journalist because she didn’t want to end up in the press service. She persuaded them to assign her to a stabilization point, believing she would be more useful there.
Over time, soldier Nataliia Zotova of the 10th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade began writing short stories about the soldiers brought in from the battlefield and sharing them on social media. They were read by both the military and civilians. Now, she’s working on a project launched by the brigade focused on missing-in-action soldiers.
We spoke for several hours straight, reliving everything she had witnessed and felt during the war.
"ONCE THEY BROUGHT IN A GUY WITH OVER 90% BODY BURNS. THEIR POSITION WAS POUNDED WITH HIGH-EXPLOSIVE SHELLS"
– Your husband is a border guard and has been on the front lines since the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion. You were heading the Social Welfare Department and later decided to join the Armed Forces. What prompted that decision?
– My husband joined the Border Guard Service back in 2014 during the mobilization. And on February 24, 2022, he went to the TСR (Territorial Centre of Recruitment and Social Support - ed.note). He was again assigned to the Border Guard because he was in the reserve there.
I decided to enlist at the end of 2023. I coordinated everything at my job, took a leave of absence, and went around the military enlistment offices, because not all of them were willing to take me in.
– Why?
– I’m 55. I’ve never served in the military and don’t have a medical background. So I had to go around a bit. But I eventually found a TCR that was willing to listen and believed in me.
Why did I decide to enlist? First of all, it was extremely hard to spend two years waiting for my husband and constantly worrying. I was terrified of phone calls, anxious when I couldn’t reach him. It was an enormous emotional burden. On top of that was my work in social services, tens of thousands of internally displaced persons. Each one had to be heard, housed, helped to reach the border. There were also evacuations of orphanages abroad, from Kherson, from the Dnipropetrovsk region. When you go through all that, and then come home only to wait for your husband’s call and spin yourself into panic, you simply cannot rest. Over time, I realized: when you’re deeply afraid of something, the only way through it is to face it head-on.
The last straw was when people started coming through our department trying to dodge mobilization, applying for disability status or claiming they were caregivers. They came to us, and I, as department head, was legally required to issue documents or confirm care arrangements based on their applications.
I looked at those people and felt bitter. There were grown men, much younger than my husband, and they didn’t want to defend the country. And I was the one signing off on documents that, while technically legal, helped them avoid mobilization. At some point, I just began to reject that work. I couldn’t keep going there. That’s when I decided to face my fears and stand beside those who inspire me.
I don’t know what other words to use, but my choice was clear: to put on the uniform and go through what my husband and friends were going through. We’re a very patriotic family, and all of my husband’s circle went to the front around the same time. I realized I was mentally losing them, my friends and my husband. After two years at war, they were living in a different reality. And when they came back on short leave, I saw we had nothing to talk about. They lived in another world. But I wanted to understand them. And I wanted them to understand me.
– How did your husband react to your decision?
– At the time, he was in France for training. I called him and said, "I’ve decided to join too." And I’m grateful he didn’t try to stop me, just as I never tried to stop him when it was his turn.
– Didn’t you want to talk him out of it, ask him to stay?
– I knew he wanted to go and needed to go. If I’d tried to stop him, he wouldn’t have understood.
Sometimes I’d hear people say things like, "Why did you let your man go? I love mine so much, I’d never let him leave. I’d hide him somewhere." Those kinds of comments irritated me. As if I had to justify the fact that different kinds of relationships exist, that there are different values. As if I had to explain why my husband is fighting. Meanwhile, most men were dodging TCR, and you couldn’t find a plumber or handyman in the city to fix anything at home.
All of that built up and led to my decision. You know how they say there are three responses to stress? Fight, flight, or freeze. Mine was to fight. So to sum it up: yes, it was triggered by stress, but the decision itself was deliberate. I spent a long time thinking it through.
– Did you immediately go to the unit where your husband served or to some other unit? After all, he’s still a border guard, and you’re now in the Armed Forces.
– I wanted to join his unit. But he holds a command position, and we wouldn’t have been able to serve together anyway, it would’ve been a conflict of interest. Besides, he told me that after training in France, a new brigade was supposed to be formed, and his unit would be part of it. At that point, I didn’t know it would be the new border guard brigade "Hart." I thought it would be part of the Armed Forces, that they were simply reinforcing the structure and creating new brigades.
I ended up joining the brigade where my sister serves. I’d read recruiter advice saying it’s better to enlist where you have someone you trust, it helps with the fear. And in that brigade, besides my sister, my niece was also serving. My brother, too, was in the military.
After completing training, I was deployed to the east. At first, I was assigned to the unit’s Personnel Psychological Support Division. I worked there for a while handling documents, responses to requests, correspondence with TCRs, preparing paperwork for families of the fallen, and helping arrange different types of support.
– When did you transfer to the stabilization point?
– After I was sent to the permanent deployment point in a rear city, it was my first rotation after being in the combat zone, I started feeling a bit low. The work was interesting: I kept preparing responses to inquiries from various institutions, compiling reports, and eventually took charge of the brigade’s call center, which is very well-organized. I also took duty shifts like the other women. But it weighed on me that I was in the rear. Certain things started irritating me again. I didn’t feel at ease.
At one point, during a meeting with families of missing soldiers and POWs, the deputy brigade commander happened to mention the stabilization point. From that moment on, I started asking to be transferred there. "But you don’t have a medical degree," they told me. I explained that I’d completed tactical medicine training and showed them my certificates. Eventually, I got through to them, and they attached me to the medical company and sent me to the stabilization point. It served wounded soldiers from three brigades, most of them brought in with severe injuries caused by drone-dropped explosives. There were traumatic amputations, partial amputations. Some had burns from high-explosive shells, others had been poisoned by gas. Soldiers who were crushed by soil or wooden bunker beams when something hit their trench.
There were civilians who also suffered from enemy attacks.
– Where were the wounded brought in from?
– From various directions. Most of the work happened at night. You might get two hours of sleep, and then suddenly they’re bringing someone in, you jump up and get to work. We had to cut off the soldiers’ clothes, wash the dirt off their bodies thoroughly so the wounds could be treated. Sometimes two of us handled it, sometimes four. It had to be done quickly.
I could treat minor wounds myself. For example, while the doctors were working on an amputated limb, the soldier might also have multiple shrapnel injuries elsewhere.
There were cases where I was entrusted with escorting stabilized soldiers to the hospital.
I’m not sure it’s appropriate to say I liked it there, but I felt truly needed. Just washing a wounded soldier’s feet felt like catharsis. They were all so young, the same age as my own kids. My heart nearly stopped when one young guy asked me, "Will I have no arm?" And he looked at what was left of it with such hope in his eyes…
I’m proud I made it through without ever fainting. Where had I ever seen anything like that before, Tania? Maybe a traffic accident on the news when I worked in television and even that, from a distance. But nothing like the horrors I saw there.
Once, they brought in a soldier whose body was almost entirely burned… Another guy, they kept trying to resuscitate him, but he didn’t make it. They recorded the time of death, but I was staring at his stomach, it looked like he was still breathing. And you want to shout: "Look! He’s breathing! Don’t stop yet!"
That’s when I would step outside, I didn’t want to hear his name or know how old he was.
– So you wouldn’t remember?
– It hurt too much. I imagined that somewhere his wife or mother was waiting for him. And they still didn’t know. Maybe they were expecting a call from him. But I already knew there wouldn’t be one.
"THEY’RE DROPPING SOME KIND OF CRAP THAT STOPS PEOPLE FROM BREATHING AND IT’S INCREDIBLY HARD TO SAVE THEM AFTERWARD."
– I’ll quote one of your Facebook posts: "They brought him in around 8 a.m. He was conscious and begging for pain relief. Just a kid, skinny, looked like a teenager. He wasn’t screaming or groaning. He just kept repeating, in a calm, steady, still-strong voice: ‘I want to sleep. Please. I just want to sleep. Do something so I can sleep." You’ve written a lot about what you saw. Did it help you cope?
– When I first arrived at the stabilization point, the head of the unit came out to meet me. I said, "Private Zotova reporting for duty," and he asked, "Are you a medic?" I said no. "We need medics. Do you understand?" he pressed, and I got flustered. I stood there, trying to explain that I’d mop the floors, clean, do anything, I just wanted to be useful. He told me even for orderlies, they needed men, because wounded soldiers had to be lifted. "Look at yourself," he said. "What are you even doing here at one meter fifty?" And just then, the phone rang. A vehicle was pulling up, wounded on board. He looked at me sternly: "Drop your backpack. Gloves are over there. Why are you standing still? Grab the scissors. Cut the clothes." They’d brought in soldiers with amputations.
I grabbed a pant leg — it was soaked in blood and mud. I froze.
He said to me, "Cut!"
Over time, I realized he was an incredibly kind person. He was just a medic, a person for whom every second counts. There’s no place for getting in the medics’ way when they are trying to save someone’s life. I clenched my teeth, picked up the scissors, and started cutting that pant leg.
At first, I tried not to look. But it’s not just what you see, it’s the smell. The smell of blood, torn flesh. I still feel it. I don’t know if I’ll ever get rid of it.
As for the posts, I wrote because it helped me release the pain. When I was on leave with my husband in the Kharkiv region, some of his fellow soldiers came up to me and said they’d been reading my posts. One guy said, "I couldn’t read them all at once, had to take breaks. You read a few paragraphs, go have a smoke, then come back and read more. How did you even live through all that?"
I realized that the pain was slowly building up inside, and I had to do something about it, so I started writing. I don’t even know how it came out so emotional. I’d go back and reread it myself and cry.
And it became a record of this war. Of everything we’ve been going through.
– You said you managed to stay on your feet and never fainted. But were there moments when the emotions felt overwhelming?
– There was one time they brought in a soldier with over 90% of his body burned. Their position had been pounded with high-explosive shells. They transferred him onto the table, and I saw his charred skin peeling off… My vision went dark, and I had to grab the doorframe. That was the hardest moment for me.
– Were they able to stabilize him?
– Yes. At least he left us alive.
– Did you ever ask what happened to the soldiers you helped?
– I asked about that guy with the burns. Though in general, we’re told not to ask because some of the injuries are so severe, and you never know what the outcome will be or at what stage.
I had closer contact with the soldiers I escorted to the hospital. One of them, while we were driving, said, "Let’s take a selfie together. I’ll find you on Facebook" (smiles – ed.). There he was, legs shattered and still cracking jokes.
– Did you leave when you were assigned to handle missing-in-action cases?
– Yes. I didn’t want to go. Despite all the pain and horror I witnessed there, it gave me hope. The soldiers who said, "It’s fine, I’ll heal up, get a prosthetic, and rejoin my comrades." I’d listen and think: there are people like that, titans who stand tall no matter what and here I was, complaining because of something Trump said. And these guys are ready to fight again without limbs.
And the nurses I worked with… ordinary women, mostly my age. And many of them were named Nataliia. We used to joke that our parents must’ve been from a generation that thought it was trendy to name their daughters that.
Being with those people was pure joy. Like touching the divine.
– Are you a religious person?
– I wouldn’t say I’m deeply religious, but I do believe there’s something greater that guides us. Both the medics and I have witnessed near-mystical moments when it seemed like everything was over, and yet life went on.
When you work on the edge between life and death, you begin to sense that something is out there. Or maybe it’s just that you want to believe it more.
But most of the time, it’s not mysticism, it’s the professionalism of the people involved. Those who evacuate the wounded, those who give first aid in the trenches, and those who fight to save lives afterward.
The one soldier we couldn’t save while I was there had been poisoned by gas. Even though the Russians try to twist in front of international organizations, claiming they only use substances permitted by conventions, in reality, they’re dropping some kind of crap that stops people from breathing and makes it incredibly hard to save them.
– Do they use gas often?
– Yes. But the soldiers who were out in the open handled the poisoning better. The one who died — a gas drop landed inside the bunker he was in.
After traumatic amputations and shrapnel wounds, I’d put gas poisoning as the second most common injury, based on what I saw at the stabilization point.
– Back during the war in Donbas, I was in the east, and near Zaitseve we met a group of paramedics. One of them was a stunning woman; her makeup and hairstyle really caught my eye. She’d saved many soldiers, and they had great respect for her. So we talked a lot, both about what was happening and, a little, about beauty. Do things like makeup, manicures, and hairstyles still matter to you?
– Before I got to the stabilization point, I was still at the permanent deployment base and I had the chance to get my nails done. But I made a conscious choice not to. I thought: how could I show up at the front lines with polished nails?
But when I arrived, a nurse came out to meet me. She was wearing a bright green tracksuit with flared pants. She had a flak vest on, a helmet way too big for her narrow shoulders. Delicate, with big eyes and mascara on her lashes. And her nails — short, but painted a vivid red. I remember thinking: now that’s strength. And I realized, life goes on, no matter what. So yes, I try to take care of myself. When there’s a chance, I get my nails done, do my hair.
– When I decided to enlist, I talked to a psychologist. She advised me to take something from home, an item that would bring pleasant emotions. A keychain I used to carry, a drawing from my grandson, or my favorite perfume. I even asked, "Perfume? Really?" She said, "You don’t have to wear it. Just smell it." So I brought my little bottle of Chanel. And they still travel with me.
– Do you use them?
– Only when I’m on leave. But I do smell them. That scent of civilian life, it gives me strength.
When you paint your nails or touch up your lashes, in the middle of all these gray, heavy days, it helps you feel alive. It brings emotions back. Makes you want to feel beautiful.
– You’re now working on writing the stories of soldiers who are missing in action. I haven’t heard of anything like that in other brigades. How did the idea come about?
– The idea came during a meeting with families of the missing. They rebuked that fallen soldiers are often remembered and honored, but the names of the missing, who are even more numerous, tend to be forgotten. So it was decided to launch a project dedicated to them.
At first, I kept quiet about my background as a journalist; I didn’t want to end up in the press office. But I continued writing my posts, the ones you mentioned, editing a book. That’s how I got involved in the project.
I’m responsible for the writing. It’s basically an archive of the missing, with a photo, a short bio, their story of joining the military, information about their combat path, acts of bravery, the circumstances of their disappearance, and reflections from their comrades and families.
– There are different situations in which a person is listed as missing in action. Some may have been killed, but their body remained in territory occupied by Russia. Others may have been taken prisoner, but that hasn’t been confirmed. Do you take this into account when writing about it?
– Of course. After me, the texts are reviewed by people who are directly responsible for this line of work and have long served in the military. And they adjust the information based on what they have. We also coordinate everything with the families.
And if there’s any indication that someone may be in captivity, for example, if a video of them has been published on enemy resources, we include that too.
As I mentioned earlier, the idea for the project came during meetings with families of soldiers listed as missing. They were hurt that no one was speaking about their husbands.
"The fallen have memorials, you can go there, lay flowers. But it’s like our loved ones don’t exist. Yes, we receive payments, but what truly matters is recognition. A sign of respect for those who never broke their oath, never abandoned their weapons, fought to the very end and went missing in action," they emphasized during the meetings.
Before I start writing, I try to connect with the person, I look closely at their photos. Some families share a lot, while others — there’s simply no one left to tell their story. These people were alone. You look at the photo and it’s like you’re scanning the person. You see their eyes, their expression. In one picture, they’re smiling, in another, gently holding a cat. And you realize: this was a kind, sensitive person.
It’s heartbreaking that so many families still don’t know where their loved ones are. That’s why we’re doing everything we can for them.
– You said you stepped out of the stabilization point when a soldier died because you didn’t want to know his name or age. Isn’t it hard for you to write these kinds of stories?
– There’s a reason I said I "scan" the person when I look through their photos. Because I know I’m also inflicting some additional trauma on my own psyche. Before, I just knew the number of those missing in action. Now, I know their names. I know their birth dates. I see them in uniform, in civilian clothes. I read about the people waiting for them at home. Families write not only about parents, wives, and children, some mention nieces, goddaughters. We include everything, because that’s what the family wants, and we respect that.
All of this is part of preserving history. And that’s exactly how I approach it. Every person who went to the front and gave their life or health deserves to be remembered. When a soldier is confirmed dead, a memorial tablet goes up at their school, a street might be named after them. But the missing? It’s like they’re both there and not. No streets bear their names. No documentaries are made about their bravery. And I understand their families. They don’t know whether their father, husband, or brother is being tortured in captivity or whether his body is rotting somewhere. That’s unbearable. So should we be talking and writing about these people? Absolutely. It’s the right thing to do, without a doubt.
– In one of your posts, you described people’s reactions to a TCR raid and a comment that a wounded soldier drew your attention to while you were trying to take his blood pressure. You wrote that most of the comments were negative, full of curses, but this one stood out to both of you the most. "… He kept pointing at a single comment, the only one, left by a cheerful, smiling woman in response to a guy in uniform who had written something like: ‘Why are some of us in the trenches, while others are partying in clubs and restaurants?’ This woman, with a name like the Virgin Mary and a hometown listed as Mariupol, replied with something along these lines: ‘So what, if someone out there lost a loved one, does that mean we all have to lose someone? "What, are you pissed off at us just because we’re still alive?" and then she added "You must be such a true patriot of Ukraine that you want everyone dead!"
By the time I finished reading it, I was the one who needed my blood pressure checked, not because of my own emotions, but because of his. That single comment, by pure chance, became a powerful trigger for him, a man who had just lost his comrades and barely survived himself," you wrote on Facebook.
How do you feel now about those trying to avoid mobilization in any way they can?
– It’s much easier now, ever since I joined the military and surrounded myself with people who weren’t afraid to serve. You know, if you look at the first photos taken at the TCRs, you’ll see fear in almost everyone’s eyes. I had it too, you can see it in my picture. Because I knew exactly where I was going, and that I might not come back. But now I’m among people who’ve already overcome that fear.
What about those who can’t face that fear and try to avoid service? When I was a civilian, I hated them. My husband was at the front, and I understood that because of these draft dodgers, there was no one to replace him and the other guys. It tore me apart to hear that someone had paid money to get their own child classified as disabled, just to avoid military service. Now, when I come back to Mukachevo and walk through the city. I see men walking around. Well, let them walk...
But I still believe there is a law and those who break it must be held accountable. When TCR officers overstep their authority, that must be investigated. But if women flip over a TCR vehicle, that, too, requires a proper response. It should be investigated, and those responsible must face consequences.
Then I’ll know I’m defending a country that stands for justice and democratic values. Send those ladies flipping TCR vehicles to do community service, have them deliver draft notices. Let’s see how they handle that.
Tetiana Bodnia, Censor.NET
