The remarkable women of Ukraine

Nina Myronenko was a model before the war

Even as Putin’s bombs rained down on the city of Sumy on two Sunday nights ago, Iryna and her friends tried to keep their sense of humour. “While I was messaging you a rocket arrived in Sumy, literally five minutes ago. It was very loud and scary,” she told me. “But my friends and I were saying that it’s good that it is cold, because our windows are closed. The bombs are not so loud anymore.”

The missile hit an apartment block. At least eleven residents were killed, including a nine-year-old boy and a fourteen-year-old girl. The winter months may mean the sound of the incoming missiles is muffled. They are still as deadly.

This is Iryna’s reality. During the day, she and her four-year-old son, Vanya, live as normal a life as anyone can when living in a war zone. At night, the terror comes. “The most terrible and surprising thing is that people get used to war,” she says. “For us, it is now normal that a drone or rocket may arrive in the evening.”

Iryna Rushetskaya (33), who is a partner in a cosmetics distribution company, is just one of the millions-strong army of women who keep Ukraine functioning while their menfolk are at the front. They are in government. One in two businesses are now run by women. They are the country’s main breadwinners, earning money to feed their families and to send to the front for essential supplies. Babushkas (older women) feed the soldiers while women like Iryna and her friends raise money to buy drones for Ukraine’s citizen army. Traditionally a patriarchal society, Ukrainian women are asserting themselves, leading the war effort at home, as I found out earlier this month in a visit to this beleaguered yet resilient country.

Sumy was occupied on the first day of the Russian invasion in February 2022. Iryna fled to Scotland with her son, where she sought refuge for several months. But by 2023 she was back home. “I didn’t plan to emigrate,” she says. It was a forced trip for security, I was not searching for a ‘better life’. And I missed my family, my husband and my mum.”

Life changing

Nina Myronenko (27), who lives in Zaporizhzhya, a city near the frontline, enjoyed a glamorous lifestyle before the war. A model and events organiser, she now runs a charity that distributes food, clothes and blankets to communities and soldiers on the front line. She also works for Scottish-based charity HopeFull, which delivers food to vulnerable communities and is now developing a rehabilitation programme for veterans.

“My life has changed completely from a cheerful girl who travels around the world and takes photos”, explains Nina. “I suddenly turned into a girl who needs to make decisions quickly and be responsible for a large team, Every day we have to adapt to the situation and do what is necessary at that moment. When there is a shortage of food, we look for it, when there is no power, we look for generators. Now we are in the process of opening a large veteran space, with free physical and psychological rehabilitation.”

Her husband and her brother are in the military. “All my male circle protects us for which I am eternally grateful. I watch how desperately they fight and do not give up, so I also cannot give up…regardless of how tired I am.” Nina says if the war had not happened, she would likely have been a mother by now. “But I believe our happy, calm life will return. And together we will rebuild our country, and it will be even better than before.”

There has been a significant Ukrainian population living in the UK since 1946, when tens of thousands fled the country after it was swallowed up by the Soviet Union. Olga Nechaeva (48) lives in Hertfordshire with her two teenage children, but her work is now in Ukraine, her ancestral home. “My family has Jewish, Polish and Ukrainian roots, but I grew up in Moscow. And for the last 18 years I have lived in the UK.”

She enjoyed a corporate career in Hollywood, before starting her own business developing psychology apps. She is also a social media “influencer” among the global community of Russian speakers. “I write about the challenges facing modern women, based on my experiences as a single mother, entrepreneur, and finding my own way in the world.”

Priorities

She woke on the morning on 24 February 2022 to the news that Russia had invaded Ukraine. “I didn’t have any immediate relatives still living there,” she explained, “But there wasn’t a second where I had any doubts as to where my loyalties lay.”

Within days she and her team had launched a programme to support people fleeing the war. “Up to seven buses every week, full of women, children, cats and dogs, travelling 24 hours to reach here.” She helped transport 1,500 people and 250 pets – including a hamster – in less than six months.

And she fell in love. She met her partner, a soldier, online. “His team urgently needed a 4 by 4 truck. I raised the money and drove it to Ukraine. I didn’t meet him until months later when I drove another truck over. We have been together ever since – well to the extent the war allows. Each morning, I wake up to a message from him. “All 450” – military code for ‘everything is good’.

“I share the life of so many Ukrainian women who are waiting for their loved ones, husbands, brothers, sons. The sickening dread of ‘message not delivered.’ The silence. The waiting. The tears that come, when finally, he’s okay.”

Olga joined HopeFull in 2023 as a volunteer, and earlier this year she joined its HopeFull Future team, as she explains. “I am working with Simon Edwards, who led a similar programme for Help for Heroes. We are creating a programme for combat stress, designed to help veterans reintegrate into civilian life after the war.”

Digital transformation

President Zelensky in his khakis may be Ukraine’s most recognisable face, but his government, like the rest of the country, is dependent on the skills and energy of women like Valeriya Ionan – the deputy minister for digital transformation, responsible for Ukraine’s world-leading public service digital infrastructure. Its groundbreaking Diia app allows citizens to access more than 30 public services online, and since the war began, it has evolved into an essential part of the defence effort. Civilians can use it to report real-time intelligence about Russian troop movements. “It has empowered Ukrainians to contribute directly to the nation’s defence, and embodies the spirit of collective resistance,” explains the minister.

“Balancing the role of a mother and government minister during the invasion requires unprecedented strength and focus”, says Valeriya. “Yet, like many Ukrainian women, I have found resilience in purpose and community. Ukrainian women have taken on vast and deeply significant roles—protectors, entrepreneurs, volunteers, and leaders—all while carrying the immeasurable responsibilities of motherhood and family life.”

And afterwards? When the war ends? Iryna, living in the heart of the conflict, says Ukrainian women have learned to live one day at a time. “You never know what war will bring tomorrow or if will you wake up at all,’ she says.

“This is the great existential meaning of the war – we have finally begun to appreciate what we always had and did not pay attention to – our time. We now understand that life is finite…we have finally understood that we must live in the here and now. While we have this opportunity.”