By Elena Alexeeva | 2025-12-09

Maps can show where Ukraine fights, but they reveal little about how it endures. The country's resilience depends on another front line -- one held by women whose lives have been reshaped by war. Their stories differ in circumstance, but together they trace a single arc: how grief, duty and ingenuity sustain a nation under siege.

'Boys' went to the front

For psychologist Olena Rogachevska, the war's demands arrived at her own door. On February 25, 2022, the second day of the invasion, her husband, musician Yevhen Rogachevskyi, and their 19-year-old son volunteered to defend Kyiv.

"Of course I feared for their lives all the time," she told Kontur, "but at the same time I was proud of their choice, maturity and sense of duty."

When the two were deployed from Kyiv to the Donbas region -- about 600 km (373 miles) away -- their absence rewired her life. She could not sleep or work, terrified of waking to news of their deaths. Antidepressants, brief calls and her own professional discipline kept her afloat. As a cognitive-behavioral therapist, she understood that combat would change them.

"I wasn't afraid that they would come back different people," she said. "I thought that as long as they came back alive, we would deal with the rest."

Her husband was wounded in February 2024, operated on and placed in reserve, though he continued working and helping the Ukrainian military. Their son remains at the front.

"As a mother, I live with a bleeding wound where my heart is," she said. "My son has already been fighting for almost four years even though he's just 23, not yet of draft age."

Rogachevska's private anguish mirrors thousands of families' experiences, but it also shows a broader truth: women are absorbing the war’s emotional load even as they help sustain the fight.

A son who did not return

Some wounds cannot heal.

The same morning Rogachevska's husband and son left for Kyiv's defense, Lieutenant Zakhar Kvasny and Sergeant Roman Shymansky headed to the Hostomel bridge over the Irpin River. Their mission -- to destroy the span and block a Russian special-forces convoy from reaching Kyiv -- was essential to the city's survival. Under rifle fire, the two sappers laid mines at close range and completed the task, but were killed while withdrawing.

Kvasny's mother, Zhanna Hozha, remembered his final call.

"[He said] everything would be OK and we shouldn't panic," she recalled in a November interview with Fakty. She never heard from him again.

The bridge has since been rebuilt, yet no memorial marks what happened there. The families petitioned two years ago to award the men the title Hero of Ukraine, but the state has not acted. Kvasny received the Order of Courage, third grade.

"Doesn't he deserve the highest decoration?" Hozha wondered.

Her grief links her to women like Rogachevska -- tied together by loss, uncertainty and the sense that the war's weight has settled disproportionately on their shoulders.

'Veteranki'

That weight is also reshaping public life. Women now serve in Ukraine's forces in record numbers: a EuroNews report in November said more than 70,000 women were in uniform, nearly 20,000 in combat roles. They volunteer; none are drafted.

Combat medic and veteran Kateryna Priymak joined after Russia seized Crimea. Women were barred from combat jobs then, though many fought regardless.

"Officially they were paid for noncombat roles," she told EuroNews, "but they were actually serving in combat roles."

Her frustration helped inspire the Ukrainian Women Veterans Movement, Veteranka, founded in 2018 to fight for equality and build a community for women with combat experience.

Veteranka's work ties the personal struggles of women to the institutional challenges facing servicewomen. At the organization's sewing workshop, women create uniforms, camouflage robes, equipment covers and specialized clothing under the byVTRNK brand.

Designers Yulia "Cuba" Sidorova and Stas Bitus, both now serving, launched the Cubitus dei line there, while designer Anna Suvorkina trains veterans in new careers. The workshop is both practical and symbolic: it outfits soldiers while helping women rebuild lives disrupted by war.

In October, Veteranka launched "Women Can Do It!," a nationwide campaign to bring such stories into public view, recognizing that the war's sustainability depends on women whose contributions are often overlooked.

'Cuba and Alaska'

One of those stories also anchors a new documentary released in June by Yegor Troyanovsky. "Cuba and Alaska" follows two paramedics -- among them Sidorova -- as they navigate the pressures many women face in the combat zone. Their courage and dark humor animate the film, but it also traces the emotional distance that comes with long service. Both women "were sure they would not live to see the premiere."

Alaska described the weight of loss in an August interview with Hromadske: "I'm not afraid of my own death, but I'm very worried about my family and friends. I was very afraid for my best friend. And . . . he died. It was an inner catastrophe."

Cuba's fiancé was also killed.

"It happened on June 8, 2023. I couldn't just lie down and cry. . . . I was on the front line, and I had to perform combat missions," she said.

Alaska's motivation echoed that of countless women whose labor sustains the country.

"It's possible what I say in the film, that I'm fighting for my own sake … because I love this country, and I want to live here not under occupation," she said.