Tolopa's nationalist friends turned against Ukraine during the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and the war in Donbas, but in June 2014, at the age of eighteen, Tolopa joined the recently formed Aidar Battalion, and went to fight in the Donbas. Tolopa said she fought for Ukraine for an ideal, while her former friends were paid to fight against Ukraine. Her military call sign, "Valkyrie", was a name she already had from Russia, given in a pagan temple of the Slavic Native Faith. In June the LNR People's Militia were already distributing a poster with Tolopa's photo, warning she was a killer-sniper from Lipetsk. Tolopa denied being a sniper, saying she was a rifleman and from July served as the commander of a captured BMP-2, an infantry fighting vehicle. Excerpt as Translated to English as She was officially listed as a radiotelephone operator; until 2016, women were not formally allowed to serve in Ukrainian forces in combat positions.
