Women redefine their role in Ukraine’s war
Mothers who leave children at the border to return and fight for Ukraine are burying the image of females as passive victims of conflict.
“We have already taken our children to safety. The genetic fund of our nation is reliably protected.”
So says the warrior, dressed in a balaclava and staring at the camera while holding a Kalashnikov.
“We join the men and the Ukrainian army. We will destroy the enemy on every inch of Ukrainian land and in every city, village, forest and field. For every child, woman, old man, ruined house, street, even barn, we will shoot you like rabid dogs.”
These are the women of the Ukrainian resistance. Two weeks ago, they were a teacher, a waitress, an economist and a graphic designer. Now, after dropping off their children and elderly relatives at the border, they have returned in army fatigues to redefine what women can achieve in war.
It is easy to see women as passive victims and casualties of conflict. Witness the harrowing photographs of fathers hugging distraught wives and babies at railway stations before going off to fight. There are reports of pregnant women giving birth in flooded, freezing underground Kyiv car parks to the sound of artillery fire. But there is also the midwife who turned back from the Polish border having handed over her three-year-old to a distant cousin, telling German TV: “I am needed back home.”
Every day produces yet more astonishing accounts of female defiance and bravery. There’s the old lady who hit a drone, not as was first assumed with a pickle jar but with a can of tomatoes, according to the MP Lesia Vasylenko, who is chronicling the war.
There’s the cookery writer Olia Hercules’s elderly mother, who has taken up her frying pan to help her husband defend their farm.
And there is Valentyna Kostyantynovska who has learnt to fire a Kalashnikov at 79, saying: “It’s my dream to fight for my country.”
Kristina, a former wedding singer, is the only woman in her mountain combat unit. “We are not afraid of death, we are afraid to be slaves,” she says on Instagram.
Yevheniia Chekh, a beautician, a “weekend warrior” in the territorial army, posted that she is now fighting full time as a mother for the motherland.
Meanwhile, civilian women have stood in front of tanks, confronting Russian soldiers.
Their figurehead is Olena Zelenska, an acclaimed screenwriter who never wanted her comedian husband to become President, saying she was “aggressively opposed”. Now she has refused to leave the capital with her two children. In a fortnight, her Instagram account, which has a following of 2.3 million, has gone from Duchess of Cambridge-style images of her doing potato prints and campaigning for healthier school food to a plea to NATO states: “Save our children so that yours won’t die tomorrow.”
She is documenting the devastation and death toll and has launched a Telegram channel with advice to women on how to evacuate or stay and help the war effort.
“My children are looking at me,” she says. “I will not have panic or tears.”
Recently she was on the cover of Ukrainian Vogue discussing equal pay. Now women’s magazines provide online tips on how to chop off acrylic nails and load a weapon.
There are nearly two million more women than men in Ukraine. Even before the war they were showing their mettle. They already made up 23 per cent of Ukraine’s armed forces with 57,000 female recruits.
Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea, they have had equal rights to serve in combat roles. In Russia, the figure is 4 per cent and President Vladimir Putin has been busy crushing women’s rights, preventing them from entering many careers. In Kyiv, there are 87 female MPs, just over 20 per cent, and the vast majority have stayed to join the resistance.
According to the global gap index, Ukraine has closed 72 per cent of the gender gap in the last few years, increasing women’s opportunities in education, the workplace, and politics.
Now, it’s happening in war. Some have volunteered to organise logistics, armed with coloured pens and lists. Kira Rudyk, an MP, is leading the terrifying exile from Irpin to Kyiv.
Many young couples have decided to stay and defend their country together.
“I believe in equal rights but also responsibilities,” one young female fighter said.
Anastasiia Yalanskaya was killed this week delivering supplies to a dog shelter outside Kyiv that had been without food for three days. The 26-year-old volunteer had spent the day before helping a nursery where 40 children were stranded without food.
“We are not scared. We are united like never before,” she wrote in a final post.
Ukraine is one of the few countries that now has a day’s holiday for International Women’s Day. Usually, they celebrate by giving each other flowers and the men spoil them. On Tuesday they posted pictures of themselves carrying weapons.
There were female fighters in the last century. Svetlana Alexievich’s book The Unwomanly Face of War recounts how the Soviet women who became pilots, snipers and gunners in World War II would curl their hair with pine cones, and of their ruthlessness but also compassion in a “sickening, insane war”.
The difference now is in the numbers and the fact that these women can also get their message of defiance across on social media.
Women in war can be more vulnerable. The former British foreign secretary William Hague has fought hard with the actress Angelina Jolie to ensure that rape is treated as a war crime. But these women have weighed up the risks, they know their skills could tip the balance in this war.
As Rudyk said: “Ukrainian women are incredible. Because of them we will win. Putin only counted the Ukrainian men, we’ve ruined his maths.”
The Times
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