SHE WAS RAISING A SON AND WORKING AS AN ADMINISTRATOR. THEN WAR TURNED HER INTO “PHOENIX.”

Before the full-scale invasion, Anastasiia Savka’s life looked ordinary. She was raising her young son and working as an administrator. Then the war arrived, and the woman who once managed everyday routines chose a different kind of duty.

She enlisted to defend Ukraine. On the front, she became known by a call sign that would soon feel prophetic: Phoenix. As a sniper with the 118th Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, she served in the Zaporizhzhia direction — including the grinding fighting around Robotyne.

On November 28, 2023, during a mission, she stepped on an enemy mine.

The blast tore through her body. Comrades rushed to apply tourniquets. She was evacuated. Surgeons could not save her left leg. It was amputated below the knee. Shrapnel also wounded her other leg. In an instant, the soldier who had been moving through mined ground as a sniper became a patient fighting to stand again.

What happened next is why her story spread far beyond the trench line.

Savka entered a long rehabilitation. At centers including UNBROKEN in her native Lviv, and later Superhumans, she learned to walk with a prosthesis. The work was slow, painful, and public in a way she had never asked for. Yet she kept saying the same thing: she intended to return to military service.

That resolve turned her into a national symbol of endurance — not because she claimed to be fearless, but because she refused to disappear after the wound.

She has spoken of her son as the reason she cannot stop. He grew up associating Ukraine with war and sirens. She said she did not want him to live in that fear. Returning to service, even after losing a limb, was her answer to that future.

Phoenix is a name people give to someone who rises from fire. For Anastasiia Savka, the fire was a minefield. The rising was a prosthesis, a stubborn walk, and a promise to keep serving the country she left home to defend.

Source: UNBROKEN National Rehabilitation Center; New Voice of Ukraine; NV Ukraine interviews with Anastasiia Savka (“Phoenix”).