Ukraine's Frontline Mothers
(thought-provoking and disturbing)
Ukraine’s Frontline Mothers
5/11/2023 by Katie Livingstone
Rejecting the narrative that casts women with children as victims of war, more and more Ukrainian mothers are choosing to become agents of change, actively fighting to bring about the war’s end.
Marta listens to the radio while machine guns and artillery fire can be heard in the distance. (Diego Fedele)
“I’m not a mother anymore,” Marta said, looking down as she wrings her hands. She does not mean it literally—her three sons, a 28-year-old and 14-year-old twins, mean everything to her. She explained that like many mothers, she feels like she is not doing enough or is not present enough, and that maybe she has lost her maternal designation as a result. But after fighting for more than a year on the front line of the biggest war to bloody Europe since World War II, Marta is more certain of another title she’s earned—that of senior combat medic in the 1st division of the 130th battalion of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces (TDF).
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Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces in early 2022, millions of Ukrainians, mostly women and children, have taken refuge across the world to escape the war. Tens of thousands more mothers sleep in Soviet-era bunkers with their kids every night, unable—or unwilling—to leave the country or their children’s sides. But more and more women have joined the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) since the country’s large-scale mobilization rapidly rolled out this past year, switching up the traditional wartime narrative that portrays women, and mothers with children especially, as victims of war instead of as agents of change actively fighting to bring about the war’s end. It has not been easy, though.
Marta hugs her husband, Serghi, during a surprise visit in December 2022 after a week of fighting on the front lines. (Diego Fedele)
In conversations with a dozen women currently serving in the UAF, several trends could be seen in the challenges they face as servicewomen with children and the solutions they have found to overcome them. [As active combatants, they asked to be identified by their first names only to protect their families and maintain operational security.] Although all of the women said that they felt respected and appreciated by their fellow service members, every woman shared experiences of sexist treatment and the constant need to prove themselves to counter gendered assumptions about their abilities and know-how. More than anything, they spoke about the weight they felt to protect both their children and their comrades during this time and the reasons that they decided, counterintuitively to some, to safeguard their children and their family’s future by donning camouflage on the front.
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In a mass burial site, wooden crosses mark where at least 440 Ukrainians were interred during the Russian occupation of Izyum, in the Kharkiv region. (Diego Fedele)
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Women have been integrated in Ukraine’s military for decades, with the right to officially serve in combat positions as of 2016, shortly after the 2014 Maidan Revolution, when pro-Kremlin forces killed about 100 civilian protesters and then-president Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia. Today government officials say that about 41,000 women are members of the UAF, with roughly 5,000 serving in combat positions. But women most likely make up a smaller proportion of the armed forces now than they did before the full-scale invasion due to the military’s expansion, and they are still discouraged from seeking frontline positions—along with the prestige and related financial incentives associated with them, wrote Olga Oliker, program director for Europe and Central Asia at the International Crisis Group, in Foreign Affairs magazine.
Kristina stands on the rubble of a municipal building as firefighters work to extinguish flames caused by shelling in the recently liberated town of Kupyansk, Kharkiv. (Diego Fedele)
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The gendered belief that mothers need to be with their children implies that they should not, then, be fighting on the front lines. The Ukrainian military struggles to “reconcile the strength and capacity of its women with antiquated attitudes about gender roles,” Oliker wrote in Foreign Affairs, concluding that this has been one of the major failings of the armed forces over the course of the conflict, and has been detrimental to both the war effort and women’s progress toward equality in civilian society. Kristina attributes much of her fortitude as a soldier to the lessons she learned as a mother caring for her newborn son on her own. “It was the hardest time of my life,” she said. “If someone gave me a choice to have one more child or one more war,” she jokes, “I’d tell them I’ve already got a son.” And while some critics of the full integration of women into the military have cited men’s “instinctive” inclination to protect women as a weakness of mixed-gender military units that leads to a breakdown in order, such behavior can sometimes provide a benefit.
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The photographer for this story is DIEGO FEDELE, an Italian freelance photographer based in Melbourne, Australia. His work focuses on topics of migration and social issues. After the Russian invasion last year, he traveled multiple times through Ukraine to understand the conflict and what people are enduring; he is committed to making a long-term observation of the consequences of the war.
https://msmagazine.com/2023/05/11/ukraine-mother-war/