Mriya is a search and rescue dog in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-biggest city and one of the most heavily-bombarded places on Earth. She was trained to use her keen sense of smell to find people trapped in a building blown up by a Russian bomb, missile or kamikaze drone.
A black Australian Cattle Dog, Mriya (Ukrainian: Мрія = “Dream” or “Aspiration”) no longer works in search and rescue because once, while she was looking for Ukrainian humans trapped after a Kremlin weapon had nearly demolished a building, the precariously positioned remaining ruins collapsed on top of her.
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Mriya now is eight years old (human years) and her coat is touched with gray. Even though she suffered permanent injuries Mriya is still willing to look for people buried in a building blown up by Russia.
But now, Mriya suffers from a canine version of PTSD. She is nervous and fearful if taken to a missile strike site filled with smoke, dust, flashing lights and sirens, and asked to go hunt for humans alive and dead in the rubble, her handler said.
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“Mriya is a very good dog and she would go out and look for people if we ask it of her. You can see she wants to do her job, but we can see she hates it and she’s frightened,” handler Oleksandra “Sasha” Karpova said in a Friday interview.
“So now Mriya helps us in other ways,” Karpova said. “She’s a good mother, she shows the younger dogs how to behave… Now she works with [human] combat veterans.” Karpova said. Karpova is 29 and a war refugee to Kharkiv from Luhansk, an occupied eastern Ukrainian city taken over by Russia in 2014.
During a typical month in 2025 Kremlin strike packages have attacked Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-biggest city and the country’s academic and scientific center of gravity, almost daily (25-30 times on average) with aerial bombs, glide bombs, kamikaze drones, cruise missiles, hypersonic missiles, and ballistic missiles. In an average month, 5 or 6 Kharkiv residents are killed and around 90 are wounded, of whom 10-15 percent typically are children, according to data published by the Kharkiv mayor’s office and Gwara Media.
The most destructive Russian strike against Kharkiv, on June 7, 2025, saw over 50 weapons launched in the dawn hours and hundreds of follow-up strikes throughout the day. At least five people died and sixty were wounded, among them eight children. Warheads carrying between 200 kg and 450 kg of high explosives each hit a garment factory, a school, a music academy, a shopping center, administrative buildings, and public transportation.
At least 18 apartment buildings and 13 private homes were hit as well. A Russian Air Force-launched X-101 cruise missile probably scored the single most devastating single hit of the night by penetrating and detonating inside a five-story residential building, collapsing masonry and concrete from the top three stories onto people sleeping inside.
Ruslan Mohylev, owner-director of a Kharkiv canine training center during peacetime, said that during the 2010s his company had mostly trained dogs for government and private companies to perform everything from security work to drug sniffing to tracking down fugitives, with teaching a dog to search for people trapped in rubble a sideline. He is married, 37, and originally from Sumy. He got into canine training first as a hobby.
The full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, according to Mohylev, changed things overnight. The Kremlin unleashed thousands of bombs and missiles, and later thousands more drones, at targets across the country. Moscow officials have claimed Russia only hits military units and infrastructure. In Ukraine the strikes are widely viewed as a Russian terror campaign with objective of terrorizing Ukrainian civilians into giving up, by blowing up their homes and businesses.
In a wartime adaptation very typical of Ukrainian civilian-government joint contributions to the national war effort, effectively, a small group of specialist dogs trained by Mohylev and his team to sniff out live humans and dead bodies in rubble, became the go-to specialists every time the Russian military crushed a building possibly with people inside it, anywhere in northeastern Ukraine.
Russian strikes against the greater Kharkiv region take place daily but not always are buildings so smashed, and people confirmed inside them. Mohylev said sometimes his volunteers get two search calls in a week, and sometimes months go by.
Mudrik, a handsome, fair-furred Labrador, is a newer member of that specialist team. Like many of his breed he is eternally friendly and laser-focused on personal happiness which, because of his training, he closely associates with a red rubber ball he will be given as a reward, if he finds a hidden person or body.
”Mudrik would do his job until he drops if we let him,” said handler Yulia Havlych. “If he is looking for someone that’s all he thinks about, that’s all he is living for.”
Relatively young at three years human, Mudrik is probably more disciplined than most Labradors because when he was a puppy he grew up with Mriya alongside who, like most Australian Shepherds, tries to enforce order. If Mudrik was distracted or goofed off during training Mryia would nip him, Karpova said.
A Kyiv Post reporter observed a training exercise during which Havlych hid herself in mud, reeds and bushes and Mudrik was dispatched to search. Mudrik was joyous when he found her.
Hunting for people in a smashed building is dangerous and potentially lethal work for dogs and humans both. Mohylev told Kyiv Post the biggest threat is still-standing walls, floors and ceilings weighing hundreds of tons suddenly falling to crush a rescue team.
A Russian “double-tap” strike – hitting a target a second time, with the objective of causing casualties among emergency response crews on the scene – has been a tactic employed by Kremlin operational controllers for more than two years. Even if a follow-up strike is not en route, an unexploded munition may always lurk somewhere in the rubble.
Fire and smoke inhalation are other threats to people and dogs, but worse for the dogs because paw pads will burn on super-heated concrete, and because even if one were available – which is almost never – a protective mask can’t be worn by a search dog, because with a mask on it’s effectively impossible for a dog to detect a scent.
Handlers enter a smashed building site wearing Kevlar armor, helmets and protective gloves and clothing. The dogs, however. go to work only protected by their own fur against glass shards, spilled chemicals, and spear-like steel reinforcement rods sticking out of concrete.
Gabriel, “Gavri,” a powerful German Shepherd, has been cut and burnt during searches but has always returned to duty. His personality is forceful and if tracking someone or something he will become angry if prevented from doing his job. If more than one dog is on the work site, for Gavri, it is critical, and if it comes to it a fighting matter, that he and only he owns the red ball.
Karpova said that Gavri’s confrontational nature, in part, is a result of his original training as a protection and attack dog, but more because of his high intelligence and understanding that if he threatens force he can usually get his way with other dogs and most people. His personality is difficult but he learned commands and search procedures faster than any dog so far trained, Karpova said.
Mriya was badly enough affected by her injuries to need physical therapy to her back and hind leg muscles to keep her mobile, and according to her handlers she can have something like an epileptic fit if confronted by a structure she feels might fall down on her.
Mriya’s main job these days is working with Ukrainian combat veterans recovering from major injuries like amputations, or PTSD – her role is to be present and be a friend. Mohylev has plans for a veterans rehabilitation center using dogs to help Ukrainian soldiers return to civilian life.
Karpova said she has received offers to quit Kharkiv, move to Europe with her dogs, and draw a substantial salary there as a world-class canine rubble search expert.
“Mriya and I aren’t going. We have work to do here in Kharkiv,” she said.
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