The night before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Yarina Ariva was busy with a thousand and one things.
"I did my day-to-day work on the city council, submitted the papers to the university where I study and prepared for my wedding, which was scheduled to take place on May 6," says 21-year-old Arava in a call from Kiev.
"My partner and I were about to finish renovating our apartment, and our biggest nuisance was not spending too much money on the renovation and wedding."
But with the Russian invasion on February 24, the lives of Yarina and her partner Sviatoslav changed at once.
Shortly after the invasion, they rushed to enlist in the "Regional Defense" - units of armed civilians who had undergone very basic military training.
Even before getting into uniform, they went through church.
"We decided to get ahead of the wedding because we were afraid of losing touch and also because we wanted to be together, in case one of us dies or even both of us," Ariba explains.
Part of the success
The young Kiev woman is just one of tens of thousands of Ukrainian women who enlisted in their country's war effort.
They stood out even before the start of the war, in the training of the regional defense, to which even retirees were enrolled, and even after it, when they participated in a wide range of tasks - whether sewing camouflage or making Molotov cocktails, or active participation in military battles.
Her wedding plans have changed.
Yarina Araiva, Photo: Mikhailo Umlyan
The Ukrainian army has managed to surprise the whole world with its steadfast stand against the Russian invasion, and the women serving in it have a part in this success.
In Ukraine there is no compulsory recruitment for women (only registration of required professions aged 18 to 60), but the proportion of female soldiers is 17% - high, for example, compared to the Russian army (12%), and more importantly: twice as high as it was in 2014, then Russia annexed the Crimean half-mother and captured the dysfunctional Ukrainian army.
To fend off the progress of pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Kyiv relied on thousands of volunteers - and volunteers.
Olena Bilozirska was one of them.
"Even though we did not have a real army at the time, women who wanted to come to the front and fight then were registered as cooks or seamstresses," says Bilozirska, 42.
"By law, women were not allowed to perform combat roles."
Bilozirska insisted on fighting, becoming an outstanding and decorated sniper.
She later even starred in a documentary about women in combat service, "The Invisible Battalion."
In 2016, the law was changed, and women were allowed to enlist not only in combat support positions.
Formal equality
The Ukrainian army completed the deployment two years later, and Bilozirska became a platoon commander in the Marine Corps.
She was released in 2020, but put on a uniform once again a few days before the invasion, when she realized what she defined as an "inevitable" thing.
From her experience as a fighter and officer, she states emphatically: "Opening the ranks to women has upgraded the military. It's not just because the number of women has increased in the military as it improves; And the women are female soldiers just like their counterparts. On the other hand, the army is a cross-section of society, and all the positive and negative phenomena that exist in civilian life are also expressed here. "Girls who insist on fighting eventually get theirs - or move on to other units."
The city of Mariupol after the heavy bombing of the Russian forces, this week // Photo: Reuters
The insistence on being at the forefront soared during the Russian invasion, and on social media in Ukraine, photographs of women with guns and projectiles multiplied.
The victims also arrived: in early March, Olga Smidianova, 48, a mother of six biological children and an adoptive mother of six others, was killed.
She insisted on not leaving the battlefield and treated the wounded under fire, until a Russian shell landed too close.
Another example is the sergeant Ina Drusova, who became the first woman to receive the highest decoration - "Hero of Ukraine": Drosova rescued ten fighters under fire near the city of Sumy.
Not just warriors
On the other hand, women's contribution to the war is not only measured by participating in battles, certainly in units of regional defense, which were originally built as a tactical aid system.
"It was clear to me that I was not suitable for the battle," shares Ariba.
"Physically, I'm not strong enough, unlike some of our other girls in the unit who do not fall short of men in anything. But I'm not there. I never did sports, I did not go for long walks. I was afraid I would become a burden, everyone would run and I would lose my breath. "And for many guys, even on the unconscious level, I will become someone to be defended, even if we fight shoulder to shoulder. So I would not want to put anyone in danger because he will have to protect me."
Ukrainian fighter during the war against Russia (archive), Photo: AFP
Gradually, men began to return to the center of the country, fleeing their families to the west, many of them with military and even combat experience.
Thus, young and inexperienced young men and women were pushed into more backward missions.
Araiva, for example, found herself engaged in controlled transportation until the start of the curfew, contributing her share to the effort to raise helmets, goggles, intentions and other equipment for the unit.
"For me, this is our war of independence," she explains her motivation, "this war will lead to the dissolution of the Russian Federation, and I wish it would happen as soon as possible."
Bilozirska, for her part, may not look so far, but the goals of the war are clear to her: "It should end with the liberation of Crimea and Donbas in full, and by paying compensation for the thousands killed and the destruction it left behind."
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