Scenes of Ukrainian resistance have captured the attention of international audiences. The conflict has been defined by photos and videos of civilians digging trenches, patching uniforms, and taking up arms.
Images of Ukrainian women angry in their defiance have proved to be arresting. On social media, a video of an older woman confronting Russian soldiers, handing them sunflower seeds so that flowers would bloom on the land when they die here.
Ukrainian women's resistance is not limited to the civilian realm.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, 10 percent of the Ukrainian armed forces are made up of women. Only those who are in combat positions won that right.
Two years ago, when Russian-backed rebels launched a terrorist campaign, women took up arms. In a time of crisis, they worked as combat medics and soldiers to defend their homes. Women were never listed in military records as combat medics and soldiers because the military did not officially employ them.
They were referred to as seamstresses, cooks, or cleaners. When these women left the military, they had fought the same fight as the men, but received no support.
A documentary from a group of sociologists and activists called the "Insane Battalion" corrected a situation that was depicted. Six female soldiers and veterans who fought in the Ukrainian military were profiled in a documentary called "Instinctive Battalion", which came out in 2017.
Some of the women are in the trenches in Donbas, in southeastern Ukraine, while others are waiting for their next deployment. The film shows women grappling with trauma after service. Many of the people following the documentary feel a kinship with the men they fought alongside and want access to military careers and benefits.
The documentary begins with a paramedic named Yulia Paievska. In one scene, she sits in a chair in a building with a cigarette in her hand. She asked another female soldier to shave her head, leaving one blonde streak at the top.
We meet a woman who was an economist with two children and who hides her dyed red hair in a camo balaclava. She can't afford to cry for the men who died. The person was listed as a medical assistant.
Olena Bilozerska is a sniper and she posts on Facebook about the third anniversary of her first combat operation. She was a poet and journalist, who was never officially enlisted.
Also, 46-year-old Oksana Yakubova, cut off from her family by her post traumatic stress disorder, was seen braving the crowds in the metro as she headed to her job as the chief economist at the Finance Ministry of Ukraine.
The combatant who liberated a number of occupied towns in her year of active duty, and who left the war only after becoming pregnant, was listed in official documents as the head of the sewing and fixing team for military equipment.
The women in the documentary have many different strains of courage. During military operations, the snipers Olena Bilozerska and Yulia Matvienko stay cool. Bilozerska, a hardened combatant who, with her husband, saved up for two years to buy a rifle, at one point calls a loved one and casually asks about Eurovision, while bullets fly just beyond her shelter, is a hardened combatant. Some of the less physically imposing women have a sense of loss.
A cheerful 30-year-old who worked as a fire dancer and musician recalls giving up her artist life to join the war at her door. She says she stopped being creative and inspired after all these events.
Several of the women in the documentary started in the military as volunteers. In an article for the Christian Science Monitor, Bilozerska credited the volunteer forces with allowing her and other women to find a place in the military culture. If a girl or woman wants to fight, she will fight.
The Ukrainian military was forced to confront a reality after the war in Donbas, that it cannot afford to discriminate.
This time, women have a path to serve in a combat role in the military. The portraits of female fighters were displayed at the Ukrainian parliament and ministry of defense. After two years, it released the documentary and took it on tour around Ukraine and to film festivals around the world. The Ukrainian armed forces opened 62 combat positions up to women in that year, and finally registered them as official soldiers, giving them the appropriate protections and benefits for their work. According to the group, there are still many positions off limits to women.
The documentary was a vehicle for exposing Russian propaganda. The world is already used to the boys in military gear so it is easier to show this on the example of women.
The documentary ends with the story of a 29-year-old veteran who is going to a military museum to see her wartime possessions. The toll of war on family life in some Ukrainian communities is shown in the stories. When she realized she was pregnant, it was one of the most difficult moments of her life.
As she plays with her young child and makes pierogies with her grandmother, she rues the idea that one day her son will be taught about the war's casualty numbers in a cold, impersonal way. She shows the film maker a video from her hard drive that shows her setting out to fight with a group of men. The entire unit was wiped out hours later.
The camera lingered on a bus stop where a banner with the face of a hero of Ukraine was hung, as the documentary ended. Today, she is mentioned in newspaper articles by her military rank.
The leader of the Ukrainian Women Veteran movement is Susak. The group advocated for both support and recognition of female veterans. Equal rights in the military were guaranteed in the law that was passed the next year.
The documentary showed that the women won recognition for the horrors they experienced in a war that will not be forgotten anytime soon.
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