KYIV and KHARKIV, Ukraine — Maryna Mytsiuk spends her free time at a shooting range outside Kyiv, hyper-focused on hitting her targets. She's got to practice. She's waiting for a call that, any day, will send her to war.
"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 war on the country nears its fourth year, and troops remain in short supply. This comes as the fighting appears no closer than it was when President Trump took office in January vowing to quickly broker peace.
Mytsiuk said the Ukrainian military has become much more receptive to women since the early days of the full-scale invasion, when Ukrainian men were lining up at recruitment centers to become soldiers.
She wanted to sign up, too, but was told she would be best off in the kitchen, she said, "where I could make dumplings."
Mytsiuk, however, plowed ahead. She enrolled at a military university for a second degree, graduating this summer. She looked into several brigades and applied to those with special forces units. She had difficult conversations with her mother and her boyfriend, a soldier. Both strongly 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."
Sooner or later, she said, she believes everyone in Ukraine who is able to will have to fight, especially with no ceasefire deal on the horizon.
Soldiers by choice
Men between the ages of 25 and 60 can be drafted in Ukraine, but women are exempt.
"We are volunteers choosing to fight," Mytsiuk says.
Ukraine's military says more than 70,000 women were serving in the country's armed forces as of January. Oksana Hryhorieva, the military's gender adviser, says though that's only about 8% of the country's total armed forces, the number of women has risen 40% since 2021.
"Until parliament passed a 2018 law," she said, "the military was patriarchal, and women were not legally allowed to serve in combat positions or study all disciplines at military universities."
Women who joined battalions when Russia invaded parts of eastern and southern Ukraine in 2014 did fight on the front line but were classified as noncombatants.
"For example," Hryhorieva said, "we had biathletes who were great snipers, but according to their documents, they were cooks. It was totally unfair."
Now, she says, women make up about 20% of military cadets and thousands are officially serving in combat positions. They include fighter pilots, artillery commanders, drone operators and engineers. NPR met several women serving in various military units this year.
Some brigades, including Khartiia and Azov, which are both part of Ukraine's National Guard, feature women in their advertising campaigns. In one popular Azov recruitment video released this summer, two dads in a car shop talk about their kids. One says his son is trying to find a job at a critical enterprise to exempt him from military service. The other says he has a daughter — and she's a soldier.
The Khartiia 13th National Guard Brigade, founded by a Ukrainian billionaire in early 2022 as a volunteer battalion, is based in the northeastern region of Kharkiv. It's well-resourced and an innovator in robotic warfare.
This spring, the brigade launched a female-centered recruitment campaign featuring a soldier in the ground robotic systems division named Jess. She is shown on a field, a white ribbon tying back her red hair, testing land drones that are used to deliver water, food, fuel and ammunition to soldiers in front-line positions.
"I am the only woman in this unit," she says. "I am 21 years old."
The drone operators
At a Khartiia camp in northeastern Ukraine earlier this year, two drone pilots — Yevheniia and Dasha — examined newly assembled first-person view (FPV) drones at a small hut with a 3D printer. The scent of shorn wood, metal and instant coffee wafts through the air.
NPR is using only the drone pilots' first names and call signs at the request of the Ukrainian military, which cited security concerns.
Yevhenia, 19, resembles Arya Stark from Game of Thrones. She uses the military call sign "Furia," after the ancient Greco-Roman goddesses who punished evildoers for their sins. She said male soldiers often ask her: What are you doing here?
"And I say, I have to be here, and that's that," she said.
"And why drones?" she added. "I think because I love to play computer games."
She and Dasha were among three women in an FPV drone unit of 15.
Dasha, 23, is tall and stern. She uses the call sign "Galactica." She was briefly married and, before the war, was making plans to become a police officer. Dasha said 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 drone operator in the unit is in a muddy field a short drive from camp. Daria is a former software engineer in her early 30s. She is testing a new aerial drone as the sun sets.
"A lot of my relatives don't even know I'm here," she said. "They say, 'She needs to go to Europe and be in some safe place.'"
Daria volunteered as a humanitarian worker in the early days of the full-scale invasion, working 20 hours a day shuttling food and other supplies to front-line areas. She never felt like she was doing enough.
"I'm Ukrainian, I'm a part of this country, and I need to help," she said.
She learned how to assemble and fly first-person-view drones, which are outfitted with video cameras and guidance systems controlled remotely. Some brigades told her there weren't many jobs for "girls" but Khartiia welcomed her drone skills.
"Here," she said, "they knew what to do with me."
She said she has lost touch with many friends since joining the military. Male friends have fled the country to avoid the draft. She said she has struggled not to judge them.
"It's their choice," she said, frowning. "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
Earlier this year in the city of Sumy, also in northeastern Ukraine, a combat medic who had just left the front line walked into a beauty salon.
Olena Ivanenko, who goes by the call sign "Ryzh," was exhausted. She slumped in a plush chair, then closed her eyes as a beautician shaped her eyebrows, then polished her nails.
"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 is 44 and ran restaurants before joining the military in 2023. She was with the 47th Mechanized Brigade before joining 412 Nemesis, a brigade in Ukraine's unmanned systems, this year.
"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 also brought considerable heartbreak. She calls them "the dark dates." In one battle in 2023, many in her unit died, including one of her closest friends.
"He was the first to get blown up," she said, "and I pulled him out of the dugout. This is probably the hardest thing for me in the whole war so far."
Ryzh herself was wounded in the leg after a Russian tank fired at her. (She has since recovered.)
She said she speaks a lot to civilians about what soldiers face on the front line. She has noticed the divide between soldiers and civilians growing.
"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 hall this spring, Ukraine's military intelligence unveiled state-of-the-art sea drones — and three members of the elite unit that operate them.
A Ukrainian cover of the song "Sonne" by the German gothic metal band Rammstein blared as the soldiers strode onto the stage. They appeared in disguise, in balaclavas and sunglasses. When they spoke through microphones, their voices were distorted for security reasons. One was Xena, like the warrior-princess of the 1990s TV series.
A version of these sea drones, equipped with rockets and machine guns, downed a Russian fighter jet in the Black Sea earlier this year.
"Our challenge," Xena said, "is to lure the Russians out of their bases and then hunt them. We intend to keep adapting these sea drones until we can target and hit Russian fighter jets, helicopters and ships under any conditions."
Xena has been a military analyst for a decade and joined this elite unit after the full-scale invasion, which has fueled a rapid innovation of weapons in Ukraine. She said she's used to being the only woman on her team.
"And it's not easy," she said. "I do feel support from my guys, but sometimes they can act like kids, you know? They see my support role as bringing them cookies or tea — or something like that."
She laughed into her balaclava and said she has more important things to worry about, like staying alive.
"Motivation helps," she said. "Motivation to win this war."
A death, and a new life
In early September, a large crowd filled St. Michael's domed cathedral in Kyiv for a soldier's funeral. As a military band played, pallbearers carried out the coffin past mourners kneeling in respect.
The family clutched a framed portrait of the fallen soldier: a smiling young woman with wire-rimmed glasses. Daria Lopatina, 19, was an engineer with the special forces of the Azov brigade. She had dropped out of the Kyiv School of Economics to defend Ukraine.
Saluting her coffin was Ruslan Shelar, who works at the Defense Ministry with Lopatina's father. Shelar said he has noticed more women enlisting, especially those under 25. He points out Lopatina was 8 years old when Russia backed paramilitaries to seize parts of eastern Ukraine and illegally annex Crimea in 2014 — before the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
"She grew up with war," he said, "surrounded by people who had taken part in it. Her path was set."
Ukraine's armed forces do not disclose Ukrainian casualty figures, so it's unclear how many female soldiers have died. The stakes are clear to Maryna Mytsiuk, the new recruit in Kyiv waiting for her 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.
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