This news was spread exclusively by Russian sources, and the 47th brigade does not even have an all-female division.
Propaganda sources triumphantly report the murder of an entire female unit of UAV operators that were a part of the 47th brigade «Magura» near the village Pavlivka, Sumy region. It is claimed that as a result of the Russian strike, the female division was allegedly killed along with their commander, whose call sign is Valkyrie.
However, this news is fake. Despite the fact that many publications on this topic emphasize the «celebrity status» of this female UAV operators group in the 47th brigade, we were unable to find any confirmation of this unit’s very existence in credible Ukrainian or foreign sources, let alone reports of their «murder» as a result of the Russian missile strike. There are indeed mentions in the media of several servicewomen with the call sign Valkyrie: one of them, Yulia Tolopa, served in the Aidar battalion before the full-scale invasion, and another, combat medic Valentyna Nagorna, fought in the 3rd Assault Brigade and died in November 2024.
Most likely, the Russians borrowed the idea of a «celebrity unit of female drone pilots» from «Harpy»: a recently formed all-female military unit, which has been widely reported in Ukrainian and foreign media. However, it is not headed by Valkyrie, but by a servicewoman with the pseudonym DSHK, who took an active part in the Revolution of Dignity and has fought in various units since 2022. In addition, a Deutsche Welle story about the unit, released at the end of May, claims that part of the Harpy group will begin performing combat missions only in a month or two, after completing training. Thus we can conclude that the Russian disinformation about the «murder of the female group of UAV operators» is completely divorced from reality.
Read another refutation about losses in the Ukrainian army in the article Fake: The Ukrainian Armed Forces Have Lost One Million People – Red Cross.
