Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko, (; (romanized: Lyudmyla Mykhailivna Pavlychenko), ; 10 October 1974) was a Soviet sniper in the Red Army during World War II. She claimed to have killed 309 soldiers. However, many feats attributed to her have been called into question by various historians analyzing her contradictory claims and timeline of events. She served in the Red Army during the siege of Odessa and the siege of Sevastopol, during the early stages of the fighting on the Eastern Front. After she was injured in battle by a mortar shell, she was evacuated to Moscow. After she recovered from her injuries, she trained other Red Army snipers and was a public spokeswoman for the Red Army. In 1942, she toured the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. After the war ended in 1945, she was reassigned as a senior researcher for the Soviet Navy. She died of a stroke at the age of 58. Early life and education Lyudmila Belova was born in Bila Tserkva, Kiev Governorate, in the Russian Empire (now in Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine) on , to Mikhail Belov, a locksmith from Petrograd, and his wife Elena Trofimovna Belova (1897–1972). The family moved to Kyiv when Lyudmila was aged 14. As a child, Lyudmila was a self-described tomboy, who was fiercely competitive at athletic activities. In Kyiv, she joined an OSOAVIAKhIM shooting club, developed into an amateur sharpshooter and earned her Voroshilov Sharpshooter badge and a marksman certificate. In 1932, she married Alexei Pavlichenko, and gave birth to a son, Rostislav (1932–2007). However, the marriage was soon dissolved, and Lyudmila returned to live with her parents. She attended night school as well as performing household chores. During the day, she worked as a grinder at the Kyiv Arsenal factory. She enrolled at Kyiv University in 1937, where she studied history and intended to be a scholar and teacher. There, she competed on the university's track team as a sprinter and pole vaulter. She was also enrolled in a military-style sniping school for six months by the Red Army. World War II In June 1941, Pavlichenko was aged 25 in her fourth year studying history at Kyiv University when Nazi Germany began its invasion of the Soviet Union. Pavlichenko was among the first round of volunteers at the Odesa recruiting office, where she requested to join the infantry. The registrar pushed Pavlichenko to be a nurse, but she