International Women’s Day leads us to reflect on the state of women’s rights around the world. For many in the Ukrainian-Canadian community, March 8, 2023 will be dedicated to the extraordinary courage and bravery of Ukrainian women and girls.
Ruslana Danilkina, a military communications specialist, whose life changed on February 24, 2022. Like many Ukrainian women, she volunteered in the army on the first day of the large-scale military invasion launched by Russia . She was barely 18 years old. Quite quickly, the young native of Odessa, whose mother tongue is Russian, was promoted to the post of communications operator, worked in the particularly dangerous sector of Zaporizhia, then in the Kherson region. On February 10, while Ruslana was on a combat mission, her vehicle came under mortar fire. She was seriously injured and lost the use of one of her legs.
After the first major shock, which she summed up by saying “at first I didn’t want to live”, she chose to fight back by becoming an example for all those who lost a limb in this brutal war and unprovoked launched by Moscow. Her new goal is to show that despite chronic pain and loss of mobility, it is possible to have a full and happy life.1.
Support for the population
Solomiia Bobrovska, a people’s deputy and member of the National Defense, Security and Intelligence Committee in the Ukrainian Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, is a woman from Rivne whom I am proud to count among my friends. In 2010, I coordinated the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program (CUPP) under which Solomiia completed an internship at the Canadian Parliament. After this brief experience on Parliament Hill, her career, like that of many interns in the program, took off dramatically: she worked alongside Mikheil Saakashvili, former President of Georgia and former Governor of Ukraine in Odessa, and was later elected to the Ukrainian Parliament.
Exposure to Canadian democratic institutions was essential to his desire to enter the political life of Ukraine. 2
Throughout this ruthless war, Solomiia personally traveled to provide support to civilians and military in the most dangerous areas of the front line, such as the martyred city of Mariupol. More recently, she carried out a successful mission to the European Union to advocate for increased military aid, particularly with regard to the establishment of the coalition of combat aircraft supplier countries to defend the population. and territorial integrity of Ukraine. Besides being a diligent and courageous public servant working for results, Solomiia marked my heart as someone poetic.
A few days ago, she posted a brief personal account of what this year has done to her. Here it is, translated from Ukrainian:
We were so scared of this winter, like it was the darkest time of the day and March was coming decades from now.
Nervous November
hard december
January Offensive
February the color of blood and Bakhmout
But she’s always followed by dawn
We survived the winter!
I am grateful to all the defense forces, electrical engineers, doctors, teachers and everyone who works like ants for Ukraine!
May this spring bring us victory.
Let’s keep the line. There is still a lot of fighting to do!
The extraordinary courage and bravery of Ukrainian women and girls is not enough to achieve a just and lasting peace. I think people in the know will understand! We are not talking here of an abstract peace as certain “pacifist” movements demand, but of a decisive victory of freedom, dignity and the value of the human person over tyranny.
* Evhenia Viatchaninova is also the founder of the awareness and fundraising campaign “Save Ukraine”