We’ve been fortunate to have such inspiring role models growing up. Ukrainian women ruled, educated, and created, they were great leaders, scientists, artists, sportswomen, poets, writers and teachers — all while being wise and loving partners and mothers. They’ve shaped our minds and opened our hearts to the beauty that is our nation, land and language.

When Russia first attacked us in 2014, Ukrainian women took inspiration from our history and stood up for what is right.

They have exposed Russian terrorists every step of the way, like the great Alla Horska (1929-1970), who’s believed to have been murdered by the KGB in 1970 for spreading information about the unmarked mass graves where the Soviet secret service or police — NKVD — killed, tortured and executed Ukrainians for being “enemies of the Soviet state”.

Ukrainian women took on the roles of great civil, political and cultural activists like our great poets and writers Lesya Ukrayinka (1871-1913) and Olena Teliha (1906-1942).

Ukrainian women have fought for Ukrainian heritage and culture, like Ukrainian historiographer Nataliya Polonska-Vasylenko (1884-1973), also an academician of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences and the International Academy of Sciences in Paris, and professor at the Ukrainian Free University in Prague and Munich.

Ukrainian women are courageous, like Hürrem Sultan (1505-1558)  or Olga of Kyiv (890-969), inspired, like the artist and legend of Ukrainian theatre Maria Zankovetska (1854–1934), or the famous painters Mariya Prymachenko (1908-1997) and Kateryna Bilokur (1900-1961). We all stand together and hold one another’s hands like one of the first Ukrainian feminists, writer Olga Kobylianska (1863-1942). All of us are standing our ground like Lyudmila Pavlichenko (1916-1974),  one of the most famous snipers in the world.

It would take me a very long time to list all my Ukrainian women heroes throughout our history. Though I can assure you, there wasn’t a time when our women weren’t seen, heard, and acknowledged; they always had a very strong presence.

I am personally witness to all of this now. I am looking at the Ukrainian women who are becoming Ukraine’s modern history. I have already written about our courageous women soldiers, military medics and volunteers.

Today I want to introduce you to a few more of these unbelievable women who woke up in the early morning of 24 February to the horrific sounds of their cities being bombed by Russia, got out of their beds and, without fear or hesitation, joined the resistance.

Katheryna Nozhevnikova

I’m very happy to introduce this woman to you. Though famous throughout Ukraine, Katherina Nozhevnikova is the absolute pride of Odesa, my gorgeous home town on the sea.

Katherina is the volunteer everyone knows and, most importantly, trusts. She is the head of Odesa’s charitable foundation, “Corporation of Monsters”. Throughout the years Nozhevnikova and her very small team of colleagues were a foundation that mostly worked with kids, their speciality was to work with burn victims, though they took on any challenge they could.

Parents of any severely sick child without the means to pay for expensive treatments, medicine or surgery knew that Corporation of Monsters would go to the moon and beyond to help. Katherina is a woman who could within hours fundraise literally millions for a sick child. There even was a time when she fundraised the money for a beautiful apartment in Odesa for a little boy who had extreme burn wounds and lived mostly on the streets with his mom and siblings.

When Covid hit, Corporation of Monsters became our shield against the virus. They saved so many lives, it’s unbelievable. It fundraised for thousands of portable oxygen concentrators and was literally working 24/7 to get those concentrators to people throughout Ukraine. It worked on vaccine education materials during the hard times and helped with hospital admissions.

Then Russia attacked us and Katheryna’s Corporation of Monsters had to change the profile of its work once more. It is now working on getting our soldiers whatever they need. And just to give you an idea of how much we all love and trust Kateryna Nozhevnikova: just a couple of days ago she wrote a post that a few million was needed for something on the frontlines. That it is of extreme importance, can and will save a lot of lives, and is absolutely secret; she didn’t have permission to give any information on what was being bought. She fundraised that money in less than a day. It took her 22 hours and two minutes to get two million for our army. 

 Natalia Lelyukh

Before the war started Natalia was a well-known obstetrician-gynaecologist in the Medical Centre of Saint Paraskeva. She had a very successful Obgyn practice. Working in a gorgeous modern clinic with state-of-the-art equipment in Kyiv, she was an in-demand doctor booked out months in advance.

Natalia is also a well-known author and lecturer on women’s reproductive health. Her whole life revolved around helping women in Ukraine overcome infertility and she took absolute pride in helping women carry a child to term and safely deliver the baby.

Natalia was also a founder of “Women’s club” which filled seats in any venue she chose, every time. She could have stayed in Kyiv and continued with her successful carrier, or she could have fled the country and started a new life somewhere else, but she stayed and she is making a huge difference.

Now Natalia is out of her scrubs and in military uniform going through frontline zones and delivering medicine and helping those who are just unable to evacuate, though they urgently need unavailable medical assistance. She is doing this with grace, professionalism and always a kind smile. A true hero of our times.

Lesya Litvinova

Lesya Litvinova is also a well-known volunteer in Ukraine who was working in Kyiv. She is the head of the charity foundation “SVOYI” which translates as “OURS”. This foundation was started in 2014 to help those fleeing Donbas and Crimea from Russian aggression.

The foundation helped thousands of victims of Russian aggression then and had to leave their lives behind. More than two million fled the region and there a lot of work needed to be done.

Later, when the attack morphed into a quieter mode for a while, Lesya’s foundation began working with oncology patients, mostly focused on helping palliative patients feel as comfortable as they could for as long as possible. A noble and admirable mission.

Lesya, just like Katherina and Natalia, has a large social media presence and we’ve got to know a lot of people she was helping through their final journey with her beautiful posts. When Covid hit, the foundation became a help centre for portable oxygen concentrators, and just like the abovementioned “Corporations of Monsters” in Odesa, they worked 24/7, to help people breathe and survive until there was a place for them in a hospital. “SVOYI” saved a lot of lives during the pandemic.

Her foundation is now doing all it can to help our heroes at the frontline and they are still helping cancer patients. Because cancer doesn’t care that Russia has started a war. And Lesya, a beautiful mom of four, is now a sapper, doing all she can so that Russian terrorists are pushed out of our land, far from her life and her kids.

Just a few days Lesya lost a colleague who also joined our army on 24 February — Ukrainian hero Maxim Nescheretskyi was killed by Russian terrorists while protecting us all. Glory to our heroes! DM