‘We Won’t Win This War without Women’

The Washington Post

12:55 JST, November 29, 2025

ZAPORIZHZHIA REGION, Ukraine – The Ukrainian soldiers sat huddled in their dark dugout, all focus and nerve – Viktoriia’s eyes shifting frantically between two screens, Tetiana’s hands clutching a drone controller.

In the fields beyond, a Russian howitzer was firing shells at Ukrainian positions. The women steered their explosive-packed drone toward it and dived.

Their screens blurred. The room went quiet. Then came the voice of their commander, Daria, from the trench outside: “There was a hit!”

The troops erupted in excitement: This was their first strike since they began fighting as an all-women’s crew this summer.

Nearly four years into Russia’s invasion, women here are increasingly taking on combat roles once reserved for men. Ukraine’s struggle to source personnel has forced its military to change. By early this year, more than 70,000 women had enlisted in Ukraine’s military – up 20 percent since 2022. Around 5,500 of those currently serve in combat roles.

But Daria’s crew is the first in Ukraine’s national guard to operate entirely without men.

She and the four women under her command drive their own vehicle, carry their own equipment, build their own explosives and launch armed drones along the southeastern front.

When Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, such an arrangement would have been impossible.

Women were officially banned from combat roles, enlisting instead as medics and cooks, or working office jobs. Some women fought on the front line despite the restrictions but were denied the same benefits as male troops.

Reforms began in 2016, and in 2022, the year Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine lifted further restrictions that had prevented women from serving in the same officer roles as men.

It was on Feb. 24, 2022, the day Russian troops poured over Ukraine’s borders, that Daria, now 35, reported to a recruitment office in Kyiv.

A graduate of a volunteer sniper course, she was comfortable with assault rifles, and had completed first aid and battlefield tactical training. She was more prepared for the war than most of the men being handed guns. But officials took one look at her blond hair and the personal first-aid kit in her hands, and assumed she was a medic. Women, they made clear, would not be considered for any other combat job.

It took nearly all of 2022 for Daria to find a role in Ukraine’s military. She watched in horror as Russia seized her hometown in the southern Kherson region, further justifying her decision to abandon her old job marketing baby products.

“I decided not to be a victim but to be a predator,” she said. She joined the national guard, trained on attack drones and deployed to some of the toughest battles in the war, including Avdiivka, where she was the only woman among the 30 soldiers in her unit.

“I still see that operation in my nightmares,” Daria said. She and others spoke on the condition they be identified by only their first names, in keeping with military rules.

As Daria – who goes by the call sign “Hilka,” or tree branch – gained more experience, the women she now commands were finding their own paths toward the same special national guard drone unit, called Typhoon.

By early this year, typhoon commander Mykhailo Kmytiuk, 31, understood that not all the talented young women in his unit were thriving.

He approached Daria, already the commander of a different drone crew, with an idea: Would she consider commanding a new group – one made up of only women?

At first, Daria refused. She had worked hard to get where she was. But then she thought twice.

It could be an interesting experiment – one that might give her and other female soldiers space to finally focus on their jobs, not their genders. She agreed to give it a try.

The group came together quickly – five women pulled from different crews to build one anew.

Oleksandra, now 24, Viktoriia, 26, and Tetiana, 22, were still close friends and thrilled to be reunited. Daria had met Maryna, 23, at a drone training and been impressed.

They were assigned to Zaporizhzhia region. The women found a four-bedroom apartment with enough space for their flak jackets, helmets, rifles and Daria’s extensive perfume collection.

From there, they began their regular commute to their new positions near the front line.

Oleksandra, from Kyiv, was an art student in Switzerland when she watched the Oscar-winning documentary “20 Days in Mariupol.” The film, about the southeastern city bombarded and occupied by Russia, shook her deeply.

“I realized how much anger I have inside for Russians and for the war,” Oleksandra recalled. The next day, she called her dad and told him she planned to join the army.

Oleksandra enrolled in a month-long reconnaissance training course in western Ukraine. There, she met Tetiana, who had just graduated university with a broadcast journalism degree, and Viktoriia, an accountant from the western Chernivtsi region.

An only child whose father was already serving in the military, Tetiana’s parents begged her not to join up. Viktoriia’s family had fled to Germany but understood she would not be joining them.

The women decided to enlist together, settling on Typhoon. Oleksandra adopted the call sign “Smakolyk,” which means treat. Tetiana became “Titan,” and Viktoriia chose “Karma.”

They signed contracts in November 2024.

At basic training, the women saw what they were up against. The camp was nearly all men, some of whom seemed to look down on them.

Men made comments under their breath. When they cut one male friend’s hair, strangers started lining up to ask for haircuts, too.

Fed up, Tetiana made an impassioned speech imploring them to stop gawking or treating them like a beauty salon.

The women were young, strong and motivated to fight for their country. They were soldiers like the rest.

To her surprise, the men stood at attention as she spoke – then applauded.

As the war raged at home, Maryna began searching for a way out of her traveling circus.

An aerial gymnast from the eastern city of Dnipro, she was traveling through Europe – performing for crowds immune to the horrors unfolding in Ukraine.

Life on the road was physically and emotionally draining. She was expected to perform in a summer costume in temperatures far below freezing. She decided to return home to serve. Compared to the circus, she said, life in the military “is an absolute luxury.”

Maryna adopted the call sign “Vesna,” which means spring.

Like Daria before them, all four women initially deployed in mixed-gender units.

Some men yelled at them or made them feel lesser. Others treated them as equals. It was men who taught Oleksandra how to drive a manual pickup truck at breakneck speed on bumpy frontline roads. Others shared their knowledge of drone warfare.

But many could not shake deeply ingrained social mores.

Even when colleagues thought they were being kind, such as when they tried to carry the women’s equipment or offered them the comfiest seat, they were reinforcing a dangerous message that they were not all the same.

Those dynamics disappeared when the women agreed to try serving together – just the five of them, no men involved.

In the waning days of summer, the women memorized every pothole and turn on the risky road toward the front, which is in easy Russian strike range.

With Oleksandra behind the wheel of their truck fitted with an electronic-warfare device to ward off drones, the others monitor a detector that beeps when one is flying nearby. They travel prepared to duck and roll out of the vehicle if one appears overhead.

The women learned everything they could about their new landscape – from where to pick pears en route, to where the Russians store their equipment.

They were not there to prove women could fight like men. They already knew they could. They were there to defend their country.

“I hate when people say I’m here serving instead of any male,” Viktoriia said. “I didn’t do it instead of a male – I did it for myself … and for my future family.”

They knew all eyes would be on them. Daria could still hear the mocking words of a higher-ranking officer.

“‘What kind of commander could she be? It’s just a show – she would be better off cooking borscht,’” she overheard him saying.

The irony, she added with a laugh, is that she’s a terrible cook.

Still, the pressure was on, and as summer turned to fall and the trees that once provided crucial cover began to shed their leaves, the soldiers grew frustrated with their mission.

Time after time, the drones they were provided just would not cooperate. They knew how to fly them. They built successful bombs. But they watched again and again as the drones crashed or lost contact before reaching Russian troops and equipment.

Then, on an October morning, they set up shop in a trench line near a meadow.

Oleksandra prepared the drone, carefully attaching several pounds of explosives to its underside. Daria and Maryna arranged the antenna and repeater near the field. Viktoriia and Tetiana set up screens in the nearby bunker fortified with cement.

As they worked, they occasionally yelled at each other to take cover from Russian drones circling nearby. Then it was time to launch.

Oleksandra stepped into the field and crouched, pulling the drone onto her shoulder. She released it into the gray autumn sky.

From the bunker, Viktoriia and Tetiana deftly guided it to its target.

Then the message came through on Daria’s radio. The howitzer was destroyed.

Their celebration lasted just over a minute. Then Daria shouted for everyone to get back to work – and get ready to do it again.

As their commander, she believes more than ever in what she already knew when she signed up to fight in 2022: “We won’t win this war without women.”