She doesn’t have the flowing locks, soaring voice, or radiant smile of Vera Lynn. But for Russian “turbo-patriots” who cheer Putin’s war with Ukraine, there’s a modern forces’ sweetheart every bit as inspiring: Yulia Chicherina.
Her dark, short-cropped curls often encased in a black balaclava, her guitar strung over military fatigues, she performs her self-penned songs to troops in draughty halls in occupied Ukrainian towns and forest clearings behind the trenches.
