Four soldiers in one family: Inside the life of Ukrainian drone commander Olha Bihar
Olha Bihar's family has four soldiers. She serves alongside her mother and two younger brothers, while leading unmanned systems for Ukraine's 20th Army Corps.
The 34-year-old commander, whose call sign is Vidma - “Witch” - did not begin her career in the military. She studied neurobiology, later became a lawyer and worked in human rights before joining Ukraine's Armed Forces after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Her path through the military has been just as varied. Bihar began in the infantry, went on to command mortar and artillery units, and now oversees drone operations, training and analysis across units subordinate to the corps.
For Bihar, modern drone warfare is increasingly a problem of information as much as hardware. She says she has digitized military management processes to handle data from thousands of strike, mining and logistics missions, looking for patterns that can help units operate more effectively and reduce risks to personnel.
“We can no longer fight in Excel,” Bihar told hromadske. “We have to see earlier, understand faster and act ahead, because the enemy has the advantage in numbers, while we have to rely on intelligence and technology.”
Behind that work is a family whose lives have become deeply intertwined with the war. Bihar's mother, a journalist before the full-scale invasion, retrained as a military psychologist and now serves in Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. One of Bihar's younger brothers has fought since 2015. The other joined the military at 18.
“No one even considered not serving,” Bihar said.
‘No one considered not serving’
Bihar grew up in Kramatorsk in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region. Her life changed in 2014, when Russian-backed forces seized the city during the early months of the war in Donbas. Ukrainian forces regained control of Kramatorsk later that year.
Her family already had a long history of Ukrainian civic activism. Bihar's grandfather, an engineer originally from western Ukraine, was monitored by the Soviet KGB for his political views and involvement in an underground group advocating Ukrainian independence. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he campaigned for Ukraine's 1991 independence referendum.
By the time Russia launched its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, Bihar said her family had little doubt about what they would do.
The next day, she, her mother and her youngest brother went together to enlist. Her other younger brother had already been serving since 2015, having joined the military at 19.
“We knew in advance that the invasion was unavoidable, that something terrible was coming,” Bihar said. “No one even considered not serving. How else could it be? You are either a victim or a defender.”
Her mother had worked as a journalist before retraining during the war as a military psychologist. She now serves in Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. Bihar's youngest brother, then a law student, joined the military at 18.
Bihar recalled asking him whether he wanted to at least finish his degree first.
“What's the point of studying to defend people's rights?” he replied. “If the Russians come, that won't help.”
Having four members of the same family at war also means living with each other's risks. The family keeps in touch through a group chat, sharing photos, messages and news when phone calls are impossible.
At one point, Bihar's brother was trapped in Bakhmut and unable to get out.
“I thought I was going to lose my mind,” she said. “I lived on coffee during those days.”
Rather than call her brother and add to his stress, Bihar contacted his commander, asking for updates and whether there was anything she could do to help.
She also keeps her own most dangerous assignments from her family until they are over.
Only afterward, she said, will she tell them with a joke: “Oh, I was almost killed by a glide bomb today,” or “An FPV drone hit my car.”
From infantry to drones
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Bihar had no military experience. She joined a territorial defense brigade in Kyiv, where nearly 200 people - most of them civilians - arrived amid the chaos of the invasion's first days.
There was not even a complete list of their names.
Bihar, who had worked as a lawyer, began organizing the unit's records and communication with its battalion commander.
“Every life matters,” she said. “Everything has to be documented.”
She taught herself how military units worked - from combat logs and reports to equipment records - and gradually took on more responsibility. By 2023, she was serving as acting commander of an infantry platoon deployed to Bakhmut.
It was there, Bihar said, that she began thinking systematically about how planning could reduce risks to soldiers: how units moved, how logistics were organized and how commanders anticipated what could go wrong. She later completed a leadership course at Ukraine's Land Forces Academy.
From infantry, Bihar moved into mortar and artillery units, where she increasingly focused on building teams, training personnel and organizing new capabilities.
As a mortar platoon commander, she said, she began with three small 60 mm mortars. A year later, the unit had added 82 mm and 120 mm mortars and trained crews to operate them. In subsequent artillery posts, she continued building and training units from scratch.
That combination of organization, training and analysis eventually brought her to unmanned systems.
Today, Bihar oversees the expansion and training of drone units subordinate to Ukraine's 20th Army Corps. A major part of her job, she said, is increasing the number of trained crews and developing a system that can prepare them as quickly and effectively as possible.
The other part is analytics.
“I'm strong at analysis. I love it,” Bihar said. “I try to give my subordinates the tools and teach them.”
‘We can no longer fight in Excel’
Bihar describes the unmanned systems under her command as a “delivery service” - one capable of delivering explosives to Russian positions, remotely laying mines, carrying ammunition, fuel, food and water, and even evacuating wounded soldiers using ground robots.
Managing all of those missions also generates an enormous amount of information.
Bihar said she digitized military management processes because the volume of data had become impossible to handle effectively otherwise.
“We can no longer fight in Excel,” she said. “We have to see earlier, understand faster and act ahead, because the enemy has the advantage in numbers, while we have to rely on intelligence and technology.”
Her work involves analyzing thousands of strike, mining and logistics missions, then looking for weak points - where a unit could improve its performance or where a process needs to change.
That makes Bihar's job far removed from simply directing drone crews. Much of it is about turning the data generated by their operations into decisions about training, logistics and how units work.
The pace is relentless. Bihar starts her day around 5 or 5:30 a.m. with a report to a senior commander. Then comes one ritual she refuses to surrender: 10 minutes with a cup of coffee and a notebook, deciding which task will get most of her attention that day.
After that come briefings, meetings, analysis and calls - sometimes around 300 in a single day. The lowest number she remembers was 128, she said, not counting video conferences and other meetings.
Her active workday typically winds down around 9:30 p.m., though calls with units continue afterward.
Before going to sleep, Bihar returns to the notebook she opened over coffee that morning.
She crosses out what she managed to get done.
Pasta, tuna and a family at war
Having four soldiers in one family means Bihar rarely has to explain what her life is like.
They keep a family group chat, sharing photos, news and short messages whenever they can. Phone calls are harder to arrange, but no one takes that personally.
“We understand each other very well,” Bihar said.
Sometimes that understanding takes a more practical form.
Bihar once discovered that she and her younger brother had ended up in the same village. He knew how little she slept and that on particularly busy days she did not always have time to buy food.
When she arrived at the house where she was staying, his car was outside.
“My brother said, ‘Sis, go take a shower, relax. I'll make dinner,’” Bihar recalled. “He knew I was very busy and exhausted, so he came just to cook enough food for me for several days.”
He made pasta and tuna.
Rest is otherwise scarce. Bihar said she has not taken leave in more than a year and does not have days off. For three months, during one particularly exhausting period, she averaged just three hours and 40 minutes of sleep a night.
She still keeps one unlikely ritual: doing her own manicure, even if it means sleeping two hours less.
“My grandmother taught me from the age of 11 that you couldn't walk around with dirty, ugly nails,” Bihar said.
The nails have proved unexpectedly practical, too. She said she has used them to fix a car - and once to pull a small piece of shrapnel from her leg.
There is one part of her family life that the war has made much harder. Bihar said she now rarely sees her son.
When they do meet, they have a tradition of their own. Her son has become fluent in English, so the two speak only English together.
“It's important to him,” Bihar said. “And to me, too.”
This article was produced with the support of the Local Cooperation Fund of the Embassy of Finland in Ukraine.