Meet the only Canadian woman fighting on Ukraine’s front lines

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To find the only Canadian woman serving on the front lines of the battle for Ukraine, you first have to drive to the absolute hottest point of the war.

Brittney Shki-Giizis, a 31-year-old tank gunner, says she left the Canadian army and joined Ukraine’s forces because she wanted to be part of the fight to hold back Vladimir Putin’s Russia, rather than watch from afar as Moscow tries to conquer a European country.

It’s a message she hopes will resonate back home, particularly on Remembrance Day, when she says she’ll be quietly toasting some of the Ukrainian comrades-in-arms she has lost during the nine months she has been in the country.

But Private Shki-Giizis also acknowledges that she lives on adrenaline.

“I came here knowing full well that I am going to war. So having the hottest part of the front is exactly what I was looking for. I guess I thrive under fear and stress, if that makes sense. I like the adrenaline,” she told The Globe and Mail on Sunday, as artillery boomed nearby. Soon, a black pillar of smoke could be seen rising into the sky perhaps a kilometre from where she and her unit were stationed. “It’s exciting.”

The fight for Ukraine has killed tens of thousands of people and has been marked by mass desertions from both armies. But Pte. Shki-Giizis said she’s delighted to have joined Ukraine’s 25th Airborne Brigade in time to help defend Pokrovsk, a strategically vital transportation hub in Ukraine’s southeastern Donbas region.

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The biggest surge of fear and stress comes from the explosive drones that Russia constantly sends over the battlefront east of the city. “Drones sometimes fly around the tank, but I haven’t been hit yet. But it’s definitely scary – when you hear that buzz, I can honestly say that’s the scariest sound I’ve heard in my life,” Pte. Shki-Giizis said.

Sunday was a down day for her, in that she wasn’t in her Soviet-era T-80 tank firing at the Russian lines that are now just six kilometres from the outskirts of Pokrovsk, after an increasingly rapid advance in recent weeks. She says she has already been in action several times during the six weeks she has been deployed near the city, and “yeah, I have hit targets.”

Pte. Shki-Giizis came to Ukraine in February after completing the months-long process of being granted leave from her post in the Lord Strathcona’s Horse Regiment. Her journey from the unit’s base in Edmonton to the front lines of the Donbas region began in the spring of 2023, when the Canadian Armed Forces assigned her to Poland to help teach Ukrainian tank crews how to operate the first eight Leopard-2 tanks that Canada donated to the war effort.

Back then she was a captain, and the lead trainer on the Leopard-2 tanks, which she says are the best in the world. She taught two companies of Ukrainians about the differences between the Leopards and their Soviet-made rivals.

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Now she’s a private – though her code name is “Captain,” in an ironic nod to her lost rank – working the gun of one of those Soviet tanks. Her career in the Canadian military is on hold, at least for now, though she plans to return to the CAF whenever her stint in Ukraine ends.

“It got to a point where I became pretty dissatisfied with life in the CAF – just training and not really having an end goal to that training, if that makes sense? So, I finally made the decision that my skills and my experience would be better used here,” she said.

She didn’t speak Ukrainian before arriving in the country. After taking intensive one-on-one lessons with a tutor before joining the 25th Airborne – and becoming proficient enough to follow commands and understand what’s going on around her – she now spends her off days improving her skills with the help of a language app.

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In addition to the language barrier, she has had to overcome sexism among her Ukrainian colleagues, who aren’t used to seeing women on the battlefield. At least part of the reason she’s not at the helm of one of the Leopard tanks is that none of the Ukrainian units that have them accepted her application. “They gave other answers, but you can guess the real reason why,” she said.

While she said she’s happy in the 25th Airborne, she has had to ignore cracks about being better suited to working in the kitchen. She said she laughs it off – “if you’re being teased it means they like you” – but also insists that one of her male colleagues do the cooking.

Another thing that makes her chuckle is the accusation frequently made in Russian media that foreigners like her who are fighting for Ukraine are mercenaries for hire. “I’m definitely not here for the money. There’s not a lot of that,” she said with a laugh that echoed through a quiet forest near Pokrovsk, where she and her unit took The Globe to see a T-80 tank that was under repairs on Sunday.

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She said she doesn’t yet know what she’ll be paid – there are monthly bonuses for front-line service – only that it will be “so much less” than what she was receiving in the Canadian military.

Pte. Shki-Giizis said she misses her family back home in Timmins, Ont. – and is ravenous for a McDonalds breakfast sandwich – but that most of her former colleagues in the Canadian military understand and support the decision she has made. She’ll be thinking of them Monday on Remembrance Day, but it’s her fallen Ukrainian comrades that will be top of mind.

“I have lost some really good friends here, and although they’re not Canadian, and Remembrance Day is specifically Canadian, I’m still going to have a drink for them – well maybe not a drink because I can’t drink in this army – but I’m going to remember them.”