Women Fighting Putin’s Troops Reveal Their Agonizing Secrets

KYIV—Vladimir Putin’s war has been grueling for hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting against Russian troops on the front lines—but the invasion has been particularly brutal on the roughly 60,000 women serving in the Ukrainian army, according to multiple sources who spoke with The Daily Beast.

Besides the regular horrors of war, Ukrainian women who spoke with The Daily Beast said that the lack of appropriate equipment and resources for female soldiers often puts them in greater danger than their male counterparts—including ill-fitting uniforms, boots, body armor, and tools to help them relieve themselves on the battlefield.

“Try to go to the toilet in the woods at 4 degrees Fahrenheit... All of us got cystitis or inflammation of the ovaries and back pain,” one 24-year-old Ukrainian soldier, Julia, told The Daily Beast in Kyiv this week. “After a year of the war we have a bouquet of all sorts of health issues.” (Julia and several other women who spoke with The Daily Beast for this story asked to be identified only by their first names.)

Julia’s 28-year-old sister, Alina, is also serving in Ukraine’s armed forces. In an interview with The Daily Beast alongside her sister, she said the health issues caused by the lack of female urination devices or diapers as “the least of the problems we have.”

Women in the army are often forced to “stumble in men’s shoes that are too big,” or run in “huge pants” that slow them down in critical situations, Alina said.

“But the hardest is to run in the army’s standard, 30-pound-bulletproof vest—which just never fits snugly to the body with boobs like mine,” she said. “If I take the army armor off and get wounded or get killed, there would be no compensation paid to me or my family. Our lives, our security often depend on what we wear on our body and our feet, how healthy we are.”

Before the war, the two sisters worked as programmers in the tech industry and had just saved up enough money for a planned vacation to Bali. All that changed in February last year, when they canceled their tropical getaway and opted instead to volunteer in the fight against Putin’s invasion—first on the outskirts of Kyiv, then in Donetsk.

More than 100 military women have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war, either in combat on the front lines, during evacuation missions, or while working with the press. But many of the basic issues hindering women in the war appear to be avoidable: Experts and soldiers who spoke to The Daily Beast said they believe that access to uniforms, medicine, and equipment specific to the needs of women would translate to more success on the battlefield.

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There are some efforts in Ukraine to address this problem. The Daily Beast met with Alina and Julia at a warehouse event organized by the charity organization Zemliachky, a group dedicated to supporting Ukrainian military women, where a limited supply of new summer uniforms designed for women were showcased and distributed. At the event, organizers explained that they negotiated with army officials to approve the uniform, which features lighter body armor that is specifically designed for the female body.

Addressing the uniforms at a press conference on Thursday, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said that additional “models of body armor and helmets for women are already being tested in combat units. When there is a conclusion, the ministry by its order will approve the standard and officially order them for the system of defense.”

Runa, a petite 28-year-old army volunteer, was thrilled when she got her new uniform from Zemliachky. Before that, the former Kyiv florist—who now commands an artillery unit—was wearing uniforms about four times her size, including 30 pounds of body armor that made her muscles ache. “It fits perfectly even for me, whose size is hard to find,” she said in a video showcasing the uniform.

The founder of Zemliachky, Andriy Kolesnyk, told The Daily Beast that the organization currently has enough funds to get uniforms to only 10 percent of the 9,000 women who need them.

“We have to provide women with hundreds of items but the priority ones are uniforms—we need $1 million to produce uniforms and shoes for all women. We need just $1 million to dress up all of our women defenders in the right-sized uniforms this summer. Both their effectiveness and security depend on how freely they can move, run, crawl, load weapons, or operate a drone,” he said.

During the event, Ksenia Draganyuk, a 27-year-old military volunteer who supports the organization, pulled out a box labeled “Feminine Urinary Director.”

“Here is what us girls use, when there is no chance to pee. When we asked all our girl soldiers about their health issues, 90 percent of them complained of cystitis and yeast infections,” she said. “So our job is to make sure women soldiers stay healthy because they are Ukraine’s future mothers.”

Despite shortages in even the most basic resources like sanitary pads, the dedication of scores of Ukrainian women who are fighting in the war is unwavering, Kolesnyk told The Daily Beast.

“For a housewife somewhere in Oregon, it would probably sound crazy that pregnant women fight on the front to defend Ukraine, but our country is constantly under attack, so even pregnant women fight against Russian invaders until they are seven months pregnant. I currently have requests for specially designed uniforms and other important items from at least 10 pregnant soldiers,” he said. “We have shortages for every single item… So far nobody has managed to actually help.”