The 68,000 recruits now engaged in the ranks of the Ukrainian army remain the great forgotten of the war in Ukraine. Our screens broadcast the film of a conflict with masculine attributes in a loop. Conscripts on their way to the front. Busy soldiers in the trenches. Combatants in full military training or shooting on sight.
“Our current resistance has a particularly feminine face. These words from Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, therefore seem unusual in the daily flood of accounts of the war in Ukraine. And for good reason. The novelty of the military uniform amid wardrobes filled with vyshyvanky (embroidered shirts) worn by Ukrainian women continues to be invoked by the media.
Meet the Unknown Soldier…
A quick look at history, however, shows that nothing could be further from the truth. In command of a battalion of Ukrainian skirmishers during the First World War, Olena Stepaniv was the first European female officer. Many Ukrainian women followed suit and served in the ranks of the Red Army between 1939 and 1945. Ludmila Pavlichenko was one of them. Nicknamed “Lady Death”, this sniper by profession is the most decorated in history.
April 2014. Opposing the government of kyiv to the Russian separatists, the Donbass war breaks out in the east of the country. Ukrainian women then joined the front lines of the Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone (ATO) en masse to fight against Russian aggression. Back in 2023, 23% of women proudly wear the tryzub embroidered on their uniforms. As striking as it is, the contrast with a Russian army devoid of femininity remains a dead letter.
… engaged on several fronts…
When not simply ignored, female soldiers still suffer from a stereotypical image. October 17, 2022. The press and social networks pick up the melodramatic tone of the head of the Ukrainian presidential cabinet, Andrii Yermak, to celebrate the release of 108 Ukrainian female soldiers against 110 Russian fighters. Distilled under the guise of apparent benevolence, the message transmitted is nevertheless clear. These women are a currency of exchange, the playthings of a muscular war which is not theirs.
This situation is only the most recent adaptation of a now well-known scenario. From repeated sexual assaults to targeted attacks perpetrated by the enemy, Ukrainian women can only be the victims of their half-hearted engagement. Without denying the evidence or the profound gratuitousness of this violence, let’s say that this freeze frame makes the essential invisible to the eyes.
Having just returned to France after seven months spent at the front with the Hospitaliers emergency paramedical aid organization, the doctoral student of Ukrainian origin Anastasia Fomitchova tells us. Protecting their lands because “Russia left them no choice”. Honor compatriots and the memory of loved ones who left too soon. Begin a long-considered military career often inspired by a rich family history of service to the homeland. Here are so many leitmotifs which “do not change from those of men” which push these Ukrainian women to take up arms.
Equally highlighted, amateurism, matched with the frivolity of fighters obsessed with their physical appearance, is a chimera. On the program for volunteers and permanent members of the Kievan army: training in mine clearance and combat techniques, operational deployment exercises and workshops in the handling of automatic weapons and self-defense. Anastasia affirms that, “mobilized from 12 to 14 hours a day”, these women do not count their hours.
… but in search of a single salvation
The events of 2014 should have already put this argumentum ad feminam. Off the battlefield, many recruits led by lawyer and former drone operator Maria Berlinska continue their fight. At the end of a long-term legal fight, the Poroshenko government allows Ukrainian women to legally access 450 military professions hitherto reserved for men.
How could these women have pushed such limits without being animated by a professional conscience pushed to its climax?
Taking themselves for the judges who should rather be on the bench of the accused, the media apply their distorting filters without any other form of trial. If appearances are enough to make a world, information easily gives the mistaken impression that only men advance the front line. “A pure social construction”, denounces Anastasia.
Let’s put an end to a silence that has lasted too long, do justice to the women who are mobilizing and make their commitment an undisputed symbol of rallying.