“But we didn’t come to them with the war. They came to us.”
The proportion of women in Ukraine’s military has increased since the first Russian invasion in 2014 and is over 15 percent in 2020.
But while many servicewomen served in the fight against the Russians, they said there was an additional fight against sexist attitudes within their own ranks.
Evgeniya says he faced this before gaining his authority and confidence as a front-line sniper.
“As soon as I joined the special forces, one of the fighters came up to me and said, ‘Boy, what are you doing here? Go and make borscht [traditional Ukrainian soup]’ and thought: ‘Are you kidding me?’ could be in the kitchen, but I could also KO’ you.”
Another Evgeniya, Evgeniya Velyka from the charity Arm Women Now – which supports Ukrainian servicewomen, agreed with the servicewoman’s statement.
“There is a strong opinion in society that girls join the army to find a husband.”
He said women had also told him about cases of physical violence.
“We can’t imagine the scale of the problem because not all servicewomen want to talk about it,” she said.
Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar told the BBC there were only “a few cases” as opposed to the “hundreds of thousands” at work.
Women in the Ukrainian army are not given gender-sensitive uniforms.
They were given an ill-fitting men’s uniform, including underwear, shoes, and oversized bulletproof vests.
Even Deputy Secretary of Defense Hanna Malyar said that the field uniform for him was also for men and that’s why he had to change because he wasn’t tall.
He added that the military ceremonial uniform for female soldiers included heels.
Currently, if women in the army want to wear a women’s uniform, they have to buy their gear online or turn to charities or crowdfunding.
For this reason, Andriana co-founded a charity called Veteranka (Ukrainian Women Veterans Movement), which works for equal rights for women military personnel and reforms Ukraine’s army laws in line with NATO.
