Lyudmila Pavlichenko: The Ukrainian Woman Who Rewrote the Rules of War

Celebrating Women's History Month with a badass a day.

There’s something about Lyudmila Pavlichenko that sticks with you. Maybe it’s the sheer audacity of her story—a woman, barely in her twenties, staring down the barrel of a rifle and changing the course of history. Or maybe it’s the way she refused to let anyone tell her what she could or couldn’t do. Either way, Lyudmila wasn’t just a sniper; she was a force of nature. Or maybe, just maybe it was the way she killed 309 fascists.

Born in 1916 in Ukraine, Lyudmila grew up in a world that didn’t know what to do with women like her. She was a competitive sharpshooter, the kind of person who could hit a target from 500 meters without breaking a sweat. So, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, she didn’t hesitate. She walked into a recruitment office and said, “I want to fight.”

The recruiters laughed. They told her to be a nurse. Lyudmila didn’t laugh back. She picked up a rifle, aimed at a target, and hit it dead center. Suddenly, they weren’t laughing anymore.

By the time she …