Lyudmila Pavlichenko
Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko (; 12 July 191610 October 1974) was a Soviet sniper in the Red Army during World War II, credited with 309 kills. She is regarded as one of the top military snipers of all time and the most successful female sniper in history.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko
Born in Bila Tserkva in the Russian Empire (currently located in Ukraine) on 12 July 1916, Pavlichenko (née Belova) moved to Kiev with her family at the age of fourteen. There she joined a OSOAVIAKhIM shooting club and developed into an amateur sharpshooter, while working as a grinder at the Kiev Arsenal factory. In 1932, at the age of 16, she married Alexei Pavlichenko and gave birth to a son Rostislav (1932-2007), but soon they divorced. In 1937, as a student of Kiev University she completed a master's degree in history, focusing on the life of Bohdan Khmelnytsky.