KYIV and KHARKIV, Ukraine — Maryna Mytsiuk spends free time at a shooting range outside Kyiv, hyper-focused on hitting targets. She’s waiting for a call that any day could send her to the front.
“Of course, I’d like to be in a combat position,” said Mytsiuk, a 27-year-old folklore scholar who speaks Japanese and works at a nonprofit. “With my build and height, I’m not a natural fit for that … so I’m training very hard.”
She is among a growing number of Ukrainian women joining the military as Russia’s full-scale invasion nears its fourth year and troops remain in short supply. Mytsiuk said the military has become far more receptive to women since 2022. Early in the full-scale invasion, she was told she’d be best in the kitchen “where I could make dumplings.” She ignored that, enrolled at a military university for a second degree, graduated this summer and applied to brigades with special forces units, despite difficult conversations with her mother and her boyfriend, who oppose her decision.
“I see women my age getting married, having children,” she said. “I can’t help having thoughts, like am I doing the right thing? But there’s no turning back now.” She believes that sooner or later everyone in Ukraine who is able will have to fight, especially with no ceasefire deal on the horizon.
Soldiers by choice
Men 25 to 60 can be drafted in Ukraine; women are exempt. “We are volunteers choosing to fight,” Mytsiuk said.
Ukraine’s military says more than 70,000 women were serving as of January — about 8% of the armed forces — and the number of women has risen roughly 40% since 2021. Oksana Hryhorieva, the military’s gender adviser, notes that until a 2018 law changed rules, the armed forces were patriarchal and women were legally barred from many combat positions and military university disciplines. Women who fought after Russia’s 2014 incursions were often listed on paper as noncombatants — cooks or medics — despite fighting on front lines.
Now women make up about 20% of military cadets and thousands officially serve in combat roles: fighter pilots, artillery commanders, drone operators and engineers. Several brigades, including Khartiia and Azov of the National Guard, spotlight women in recruitment. Khartiia, a volunteer battalion founded in early 2022 and based in Kharkiv, is well-resourced and an innovator in robotic warfare. This spring Khartiia launched a female-centered campaign showing soldiers like Jess, a 21-year-old testing land drones used to deliver supplies to front-line positions: “I am the only woman in this unit,” she says in the video.
The drone operators
At a Khartiia camp, two drone pilots — Yevheniia and Dasha — examined newly assembled first-person-view (FPV) drones in a workshop. For security, NPR used only first names and call signs at the military’s request.
Yevheniia, 19, calls herself “Furia” and said male soldiers often ask, “What are you doing here?” She replies simply: “I have to be here, and that’s that.” “And why drones?” she added. “I think because I love to play computer games.” She and Dasha were among three women in an FPV unit of 15.
Dasha, 23, uses the call sign “Galactica.” She had planned to be a police officer before the war; her mother wept when she left for basic training. “My mother wanted me to stay at home, be a wife, have children,” Dasha said. “And I chose what she calls a man’s profession, living with a constant threat on my life.”
Another operator, Daria, a former software engineer in her early 30s, volunteered as a humanitarian worker early in the invasion, shuttling supplies around the clock. She learned to assemble and fly FPV drones and found a place in Khartiia where her skills were valued. “Here,” she said, “they knew what to do with me.” She has lost touch with many friends since joining; some male friends fled the country to avoid the draft. “It’s their choice,” she said. “They can do what they want to do. I can’t say, ‘Everybody needs to be like me.’ Though I want [to], honestly.”
The medic
In Sumy, 44-year-old combat medic Olena Ivanenko, call sign “Ryzh,” took a rare break at a beauty salon after leaving the front. “I know that in three days my nails will be grimy again,” she said. “But looking at clean nails for one day gives me such relief and pleasure. For me, it’s as routine as breakfast.”
Ryzh ran restaurants before joining the military in 2023. She served with the 47th Mechanized Brigade before moving to 412 Nemesis, a brigade focused on unmanned systems. “I decided after three months of service that I would stay in the army forever,” she said. “I will not return to civilian life. I feel very comfortable here. I feel like I am 100,000, million percent in my place.”
Her service has brought heartbreak. She calls certain dates “the dark dates” after battles where many in her unit died, including close friends. In one engagement a Russian tank struck and she was wounded in the leg; she has since recovered. She speaks often to civilians about the divide she sees growing between soldiers and those at home: “Soldiers say we are working for victory, and civilians say we want peace,” she said. “But peace and victory are different things.”
The military intelligence analyst
At a Kyiv exhibition, military intelligence unveiled sea drones and introduced three unit members who operate them, appearing in disguise and masked voices. One called herself Xena. A sea drone variant equipped with weapons downed a Russian fighter jet in the Black Sea earlier this year, Ukrainian officials said.
Xena has been a military analyst for a decade and joined the elite unit after the full-scale invasion, a period that accelerated weapons innovation in Ukraine. “Our challenge is to lure the Russians out of their bases and then hunt them,” she said. “We intend to keep adapting these sea drones until we can target and hit Russian fighter jets, helicopters and ships under any conditions.” She said she is used to being the only woman on teams and sometimes faces stereotyped assumptions about women’s roles. Still, motivation to win drives her.
A death, and a new life
In early September St. Michael’s Cathedral in Kyiv filled for the funeral of Daria Lopatina, 19, an engineer with Azov’s special forces who had left the Kyiv School of Economics to defend Ukraine. Pallbearers carried her coffin past mourners kneeling in respect. Ruslan Shelar, who works at the Defense Ministry with Lopatina’s father, said he has noticed more young women enlisting, especially under 25. Lopatina had grown up amid the conflict that followed Russia’s 2014 actions in eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea. “She grew up with war,” Shelar said, “surrounded by people who had taken part in it. Her path was set.”
Ukraine’s armed forces do not disclose casualty figures, so it’s unclear how many female soldiers have died. The stakes are clear to Mytsiuk, waiting in Kyiv for a military assignment. “I constantly think about it, about death,” she said. “But it’s better to die on the battlefield than from a missile hitting your apartment in Kyiv. Better to die fighting than die on your knees.”
Olena Lysenko and Hanna Palamarenko contributed reporting from Kyiv.
