Ukraine women ukrain

At first they were foreign volunteers, Ukrainian expatriate men returning to fight and people delivering aid. Now, increasingly, women are also going back. Motivated by a desire to help loved ones in trouble, or to contribute to the defense and survival of their country and compatriots in ways large and small, these women are braving the bombs that have increasingly pounded Ukraine since Russian forces invaded on Feb. Many are not refugees but Ukrainian women who had been living and working abroad. Others had already chosen to stay put in their country but were forced to cross the border to shop for needed goods as supplies dried up under the onslaught at home.

Natalia and Oksana are two of the many women who have escaped from Ukraine - but are often leaving behind male loved ones, who legally cannot leave. Far from the frontline, married Ukrainian women who fled the Russian invasion are enduring their own war of separation and instability. Natalia Verdiev, a mother of two young boys, is among an estimated five million people to have left Ukraine since Russian forces invaded on 24 February. And because men aged from 18 to 60 are banned from leaving the country, millions of displaced women - in particular those with young children - are fighting their own quiet battle, hundreds and thousands of miles from home. There are a lot of Ukrainians. Going to group therapy, we are talking about everything. The war, our families, our husbands, our kids, our pain, our happiness.

France 24 is not responsible for the content of external websites. The year-old wanted to help -- so she joined a band of Ukrainian women taking part in an intensive demining course in Kosovo, a place all too familiar with clearing deadly explosives. The trainees have travelled hundreds of miles, hoping to protect their homeland for decades to come.

Kateryna never takes pictures with comrades before going to the frontline—it's bad luck. Karina does not tell her mother she is going to the front. Iana uses social media to try and raise morale at home. On another day of war in eastern Ukraine, the three are resting with their unit in a village before another rotation. They agree to talk about their lives on the frontline of a war they were not expecting, which has lasted more than five months—and has felt like years.