Nina Andreyevna Onilova (Russian: Нина Андреевна Онилова, Ukrainian: Ніна Андріївна Онілова; 10 April 1921 – 8 March 1942) was a Soviet machine gunner in the Red Army's 25th Rifle Division who fought the Germans near Odessa and Sevastopol from 1941 to 1942.

[2] Onilova developed an interest in gunnery after attending a screening of Chapayev, a popular 1930s film based on the life of Russian Civil War commander Vasily Chapayev that starred Varvara Myasnikova as Anka, a courageous woman machine gunner, and took gunnery training lessons from her factory's paramilitary training club.

[2] Onilova was badly wounded as the Germans continued their siege in September 1941, but chose to remain with her unit when it subsequently fell back to positions around Sevastopol alongside the rest of the Coastal Army in preparation for the German assault on the Crimean Peninsula and the city of Sevastopol, a Crimean port used as a strategic naval base by the Black Sea Fleet.

In November 1941, she crawled across twenty-five yards of open ground to destroy a German tank with two Molotov cocktails, for which she was promoted to sergeant and awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

[3] Taken to a Soviet hospital in the aftermath, she spent her time drafting an unfinished letter to Myasnikova about herself on the spare pages of a school notebook she had brought with her.