At a time when men between 18 and 60 were banned from leaving the country, these women delivered President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s request for military hardware and humanitarian assistance. UNFPA urgently needs flexible financing to scale up its operations in Ukraine and neighbouring countries. Most urgently UNFPA needs financing to provide essential medical supplies and deploy further trained personnel to deliver life-saving services.

She and her team have spent the past eight years documenting some 28,000 Russian war crimes in Ukraine, from murder and torture to rape. She describes Russian treatment of Ukrainians as showing ‘genocidal intent’. ‘A Ukrainian woman can do anything.’ These words from Maryna Popatenko, Ukraine’s deputy Minister of Youth and Sports, capture the critical role women have had to play as their country has come under attack from Russia. Mother and daughter were in a filtration camp for Ukrainian prisoners of war captured in the southern city of Mariupol, and Obidina was about to be whisked away to a Russian detention centre.

• A recent poll suggests that more than 90 per cent of Ukrainians are willing to put up with the cold, dark terror of Russian assaults for two or three years if, in the end, they are guaranteed EU membership.
• But the reality was that when the Donbas war broke out the Ukrainian Army — which was haunted by corruption, a lack of basic supplies, and many other problems — was often openly hostile to women, she said.
• “It’s a catastrophe,” says Andriy Chicheta, the owner of VVI-Agro, a large farming business in the Mykolaiv region.
• They organize transport to take the displaced to safety in neighbouring countries, and female psychologists are providing mental health counselling after the First Lady, Olena Zelenska, launched a programme of psycho-social support with UN agencies.
• A politically weak Ukraine, with high levels of corruption, will be prey to future attacks and the West may hesitate to continue to support its independence.

Ukrainian women’s contribution to the fight against Russia “will change the role of women in society,” said Alla Kuznietsova, who spied on the Russians during the occupation of Izium. “I heard, ‘You’re a woman, you need to make babies, go home,’” said Anastasia Blyshchyk, 26, who initially was rebuffed when she volunteered. Rather than sitting on a long waiting list to serve, like many other Ukrainians, she reached out to commanders and found one who said he could use her. The involvement of women is a reminder that half the human resources in any society are female, even if countries don’t always appreciate that.

Women flee and show solidarity as a war ravages Ukraine

According to Kvit, despite gradual changes in the https://thegirlcanwrite.net/ status of women in the military, sexual harassment is not well defined in Ukrainian law, there are still no relevant procedures to deal with it in the army, and it remains underreported. Shortly after the first Russian missiles hit Mariupol, she was ordered to join forces defending the city’s smaller steel plant, known as Azovmash, and then moved on to the besieged Azovstal steelworks.

Kyiv, Ukraine – In May, 26-year-old Ukrainian military nurse Viktoria Obidina was forced to part with her four-year-old daughter. Former prisoners of war, swapped in a recent deal, say they were subjected to starvation and other forms of abuse. Today, some of the Ukrainians in Israel are holding out hope that the new incoming government will do more to help them. The resources made available for supporting women who have been trafficked upon arrival in Israel are scarce. “In the past several months, this has become a vulnerability issue,” she adds, explaining that women are often at risk particularly because they are so dependent on others for survival. The Times of Israel visited twice in December and was prevented from seeing the rooms on both occasions.

Ukraine’s need for women in war conflicts with nation’s gender norms, VCU professor’s new research finds

With the real risk of sexual exploitation or human trafficking, women are trusted more readily when it comes to registering those internally displaced by the war, a number currently put at more than 4.5 million. They organize transport to take the displaced to safety in neighbouring countries, and female psychologists are providing mental health counselling after the First Lady, Olena Zelenska, launched a programme of psycho-social support with UN agencies.

Many Ukrainian female combatants mention in interviews with journalists that they must avoid captivity by any means and that they are ready to die rather than being captured by the Russians. One indication of the recognition of women’s presence in the military and society’s rating of their contributions was when National Defenders’ Day was renamed in 2021 as the Day of Men and Women Defenders of Ukraine. Only a handful of cases of using services from trafficking victims get prosecuted. I’m happy for the family and overjoyed that they will be reunited,” Kuleba wrote in a Facebook post on Monday. “Mothers and daughters were in captivity and their relatives were waiting for them,” he wrote, adding that 12 civilians were among the women freed. Thirty-seven women who had been captured after Russian forces took over Mariupol’s besieged steel plant in May were also released.

In some cases, the women’s dire economic situation, coupled with the trauma of war, snowballs into the worst possible outcomes. When Svetlana followed up with the help of former MK Ibtisam Mara’ana as to why, the police said she was welcome to appeal the decision by providing further evidence. By then, Svetlana, severely traumatized, said she had no strength to continue with the investigation. She has since left Israel for “a country that accepts refugees,” according to Udovichenko. Svetlana is one of over 47,000 Ukrainians — the vast majority of them women — who traveled to Israel since the start of the invasion but who are not eligible for citizenship under Israel’s Law of Return, according to Israel’s Welfare Ministry. Of these, only approximately 15,000 currently remain in Israel, with the rest having chosen to leave. Not a single Ukrainian fleeing the war has been accorded refugee status by Israel.