Tetiana Kucheriava, Ukraine's first female tank crew member, dies at 39
Tetiana Kucheriava, Ukraine’s first female tank crew member, has died of cancer at the age of 39. She served in the Ukrainian military for more than a decade and later helped recover and return the bodies of fallen Ukrainian soldiers to their families.
Kucheriava was born in the settlement of Shevchenkove in Kharkiv Oblast and trained at the Military Institute of Tank Forces at Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute. She began her military service in 2011.
After Russia launched its war against Ukraine in 2014, Kucheriava learned to operate a tank and in 2015 became the first woman in Ukraine to serve as a tank crew member.
In 2016, she served as deputy commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ civil-military cooperation project Evacuation 200. Her work involved exhuming, transporting and returning the bodies of fallen Ukrainian service members to their families.
She later passed on her practical and combat experience to cadets at the Hetman Petro Sahaidachnyi National Army Academy in Lviv.
Kucheriava also held a PhD in psychology and received awards from Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and the General Staff of the Armed Forces.
She had been undergoing treatment for cancer for the past nine months and died after the disease progressed to stage four.
Kucheriava is survived by her son, husband, mother, sister and other family members. A farewell ceremony was held at the Garrison Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Lviv.