At an icy training ground in the east of Ukraine, a dozen female convicts are being prepared for drone missions on the front lines.

One woman, with the call sign "Kupo," steers a quadcopter in to land. Like the other trainees here, she was released from prison to serve in a Shkval battalion, a military unit made up of convicts.

"I was trying to get into the army for years," Kupo said, as another woman took over the controller and the drone buzzed back up over the trees.

"Since 2023, I was applying everywhere," the former prisoner recalled. "Back then, even when they started accepting prisoners in the army, they wouldn't take women."

Forty-six brigades, she said, turned her down before recruiters from the Shkval Battalion of Ukraine's 59th Brigade came to Kupo's prison.

The military recruiters screened out those physically unfit to serve, and prisoners with drug addictions or who had committed disqualifying crimes such as rape or multiple homicide. About 100 women put their hands up to serve in the convict battalion, Kupo said, while only around 20 were accepted.

"A lot of women are still waiting," she said.

Kupo was convicted at age 23 for reasons she declines to speak about. After five years in prison, she vowed not to waste another day.

"There's no sense sitting in prison. You have to be useful. I think I can do my small part for a great victory. Everything will be OK, even in the worst case," she said.

Under the terms of Kupo's release from prison, she will regain her freedom providing she serves in the military "until the end of the war" with Russia. But many of the convicts will not survive that long. High-risk assignments at some of the most dangerous parts of the front lines await these fighters.

The women here are training for reconnaissance, which is less risky than the infantry assault missions that many convicts are given. An instructor at the training ground joins in the conversation. "For you, infantry is a last resort." Another woman responds, "We'll deliver results no worse than the men."

Kupo nods toward a group of aged male convicts training nearby. "I think even better," she quips.

While most women on this training ground are in their late 20s, most of the men are well into middle age. As the war drags on, Ukraine is struggling to find enough motivated men to fight. And the search for manpower keeps reaching deeper.

The men here have been through a month of training and are now on standby. A call that will send them on their first assault mission could come at any time.

Amid shouted commands from an instructor, one convict sits down to catch his breath. Despite only visiting France a handful of times, he has been given the callsign "Frenchman."

"This is hard for me," he complained, "at my age, this is hard." He is about to turn 58.

Frenchman claims he was set up by corrupt police in Georgia and imprisoned there, then later extradited to Ukraine. He signed up to fight soon after returning to his home country, he said.

Among other reasons, Frenchman cites revenge against Russia as his motivation to fight.

"We didn't go to them, they came to us," he said.

His hometown is in the now Russian-occupied Luhansk region, where he and his family had worked for generations in the mines. His wife fled at the beginning of the war to France to live there with their daughter.

"When the war ends I really want to take Sjava to Paris," Frenchman said, pointing to a nearby convict soldier with whom he was sharing a cigarette.

"Yes, to France!" Sjava said, excited.

Besides Ukraine, Sjava has only ever seen Poland, and that was in the 1990s.

"They locked me up there. I had a piece on me, a handgun," he said, adding that after three days in a Polish cell, he was returned to Ukraine. He was 16 at the time and got into further trouble in Ukraine. He says he spent the past 35 years in prison.

"In my town everyone knows me as a bandit," Sjava said.

The convict said it was a desire for some dignity and purpose that led to him swapping his prison jumpsuit for a military uniform. But he had no delusions of what lay ahead.

"We know where we are going. Everyone understands it's not going to be a little stroll in a meadow," Sjava said, "I am optimistic, but also I am ready for the worst."

Three weeks after that conversation, Sjava won his freedom but at a terrible cost.

On his first assault mission, he was severely wounded and had both legs and most of his fingers amputated.