Replaced mobilized men: 24-year-old Daria mastered the harvester in Donbass

– The village of Mnohopillya is small, there are few people left, many left back in 2014, when the Donbass began to blaze, – says Daria. – At one time, the village was under the control of Ukraine, the Armed Forces of Ukraine fired on Ilovaisk from Mnohopillia, in August 2014 they were driven out of here.

The machine operators went to the front, there was no one to harvest the crops, and Dasha, together with her father, went to the combine.

— Craving for technology manifested itself in childhood. My mother is a foreman-accountant, my father is a tractor-combine operator. I often ran to him in the field, he took me with him to the cab. At the age of 12-13, she herself tried to drive heavy equipment. My older sister is a nurse anesthesiologist, and I was always drawn to technology.

After school, Dasha entered the Khartsyzsk Technological College, and the specialty was purely girlish – secretary-referent. But the fields had to be harvested. And Dasha went to the Amvrosievsky professional lyceum to get a certificate of a tractor-combine driver.

– The selection committee was quite surprised by my choice, the last time the girls studied with them as tractor drivers back in 1972. I already drove quite confidently both a tractor and a combine. All I needed was a diploma and a driver’s license.

– How did the guys react to your appearance in the group?

– There were exclamations: “Oh, girl, you made a mistake with the door, the cooks are in the next room.”

When the practice began, fellow students already consulted with Dasha. The girl knew the numbers of all the bearings, skillfully served the harvester – twisted, lubricated the working parts, chopper, pulleys, blew the filters.

– I started working independently in 2014, when hostilities began in the Donbass. There was fear, of course. Combine – a hulk – 14.5 tons. I thought what to do if something happens in the field, knocks? Then I got used to it. When my father got to the hospital, he had an operation, he had to quickly master first a small garden tractor, then a large one.

Times were tough. Daria recalls that when the harvest was going on, there were roadblocks on the roads. Sometimes they returned from the field with full bunkers under fire.

– Shells remained on the fields – blown up and not blown up. When they were driving, they saw that the tail of the projectile was sticking out of the ground, they drove around it, called the employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. They went out to mine. I once caught one of the shells with a mower, since it was already blown up. And now fragments are constantly coming across. A lot of things fly to Mnohopillya, Ilovaisk is seven kilometers from us, where the Armed Forces of Ukraine are hitting the railway station.

This year, Daria graduated from the Donetsk Academy of Internal Affairs with a degree in jurisprudence.

“I work as a legal adviser in Mnohopillya, and when I’m harvesting, I sit down on a combine and a tractor. There are not enough people; with the start of a special military operation, two tractor drivers were mobilized. Now the seeds are being harvested. It’s been raining for a week now. As soon as the earth dries up, we will continue.

According to Dasha, when there is a harvest season, they work in the field all daylight hours.

– I get up at five, at seven I already start work, in the field – until ten or eleven in the evening. The turning point, when you are drawn to sleep, comes at one in the afternoon. It’s always the same before your eyes. You just have to endure this period, and then the “second wind” comes.

You can’t relax, you need to look into the harvester, around. A hare can jump out from under the wheels, partridges can flutter. And no headphones with music in the cockpit for you – you need, according to Dasha, “to listen to the combine.”

Colleagues say that after Daria there are no uncompressed sections, she tries to clean the field as carefully as possible.

Harvesting lasts from three weeks to a month. Then it is necessary to cultivate, plow up those fields that were fallow, not sown, rested. And sow winter crops.

After one of the TV channels filmed a story with Dasha and the video hit the social network, many supported the girl in the comments, but there were also ill-wishers who doubted whether she herself, for example, refuels the combine? Or – wasn’t the actress involved in the plot at all? Daria has such a bright appearance.

— There is nothing complicated in refueling the combine, you need to get a ladder, strengthen it, climb up, open the fuel tank cap and insert a filling nozzle into it. Well, sit down, you’ll have to wait, of course, because we fill in 450 liters. To be honest, I am surprised by the questions of how, they say, with such a manicure, she fixes some problems. I do everything myself. And oil, putting on gloves, I change, and filters. If necessary, I’ll change something on the reel, twist it up. It is clear that with the same wheel I can not handle it alone. It is huge. We change it already on the basis of the three of us.

Dasha complains that many people have the opinion that if a girl works on a combine, she should be in oiled overalls, grimy, with her hair taken somehow.

— And I, for example, use cosmetics all the time. Not made up and I won’t take out the trash can. And my hair is styled. In the summer, in the heat, I work in shorts, it’s so comfortable for me.

— What are the plans?

– Just live. The situation is difficult right now. My boyfriend also serves, although he is not on the front line. We all dream of a peaceful life. Donetsk is still being shelled, people are dying. Recently, at night, they flew to Shakhtyorsk, the Armed Forces of Ukraine beat on tanks with fuel. They just put it out, a day later they hit the same place. Although it is clear that fuel and lubricants are for our gas stations, this is gasoline, and not diesel fuel, which is used by the military. But we will survive, we will win, as one of the greats said, “difficult times give birth to strong people, strong people create good times.”