According to the BBC, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said more than 42,000 were in military positions – including 5,000 women soldiers on the front lines.
The ministry stressed that according to Ukrainian law, no woman could perform military service against her will.
This means that the above numbers are the personal initiative of these women to take up arms to defend their country.
Also, there are certain combat roles that some feel are better performed by women.
“I came up to my commander and asked him, ‘What is the best thing I can do?’ At the moment.”
He said women had been “romanticized” as snipers since World War II.
In a number of stories, women snipers were more perceptive than men during the World War.
But actually, he said, this reputation has a very practical reason.
“If a man hesitates about whether or not to shoot, a woman doesn’t.”
“Maybe that’s why it’s the women who give birth, not the men,” he added, capturing his three-month-old daughter in the interview.
This 31-year-old woman owned a jewelry store before the war.
After the Russian invasion of Crimea, he completed military training but did not join the army until 2022.
She has used her entrepreneurial experience to build a strong following on social media, thereby raising the profile and image of Ukrainian army women.
Like Andriana, Evgeniya was widely labeled an “enforcer” and “Nazi” by the Russian media. Hundreds of reports were made about her role on the front line as a sniper and her personal life.
Working as a sniper, Evgeniya says, is physically and mentally brutal.
“Because you can see what’s going on. You can see how to hit the target. It’s personal hell for anyone who sees it in the [sniper’s] sights.”
Evgeniya and other women at the front are reluctant to reveal the target numbers achieved.
But Evgeniya recalls the heightened emotion he felt when he realized he might have to kill someone.
“I was shaking – all over my body – for 30 seconds and I couldn’t stop it. The realization that you are now about to do something that you cannot go back from.”
