It’s hard to believe that today, 24 February 2023, marks a full year since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an attack on Ukraine that sent shockwaves around the world. Although the Russo-Ukrainian conflict had been taking place since 2014, it still felt unfathomable that such a major escalation had happened – and that such a war was really taking place.
Since that fateful day, millions of lives have changed, all because of decisions made by one man. Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are currently unable to leave their homeland, as martial law prohibits them from travelling abroad should they be conscripted to fight. For women and children, life is also unrecognisable. Many have fled Ukraine, seeking safety in neighbouring countries, including the UK.
According to the Ukraine-based humanitarian organisation, the International Rescue Committee, women in the country are facing higher levels of sexual, domestic, and gender-based violence too. With 3,000 schools in Ukraine significantly damaged or destroyed, most schooling is online. Everyday basics from running water to heating are compromised. The stress and trauma particularly impacts women, keeping families together as both carers and breadwinners as best they can, while continuing to try and pursue their own dreams and carve out pockets of joy amid dystopian times.
Here, two Ukrainian women – one of whom now lives in the UK, one who is still in Ukraine – share their stories, one year on.
“If you’re not caring for yourself too, there’s no chance of surviving”
Dr Yuliya Sporysh, 37, is the founder and CEO of the non-profit organisation, Girls. She lives in Irpin, around 25KM from Kyiv, Ukraine, with her husband and three children. Yuliya and her team help equip women across the country with vital skills (partly via their partnership with ActionAid), such as obtaining a driving licence or qualifications. Girls also distribute hygiene kits to those in need and run attitude-changing campaigns, highlighting the importance of looking after your mental health and breaking down gender stereotypes.
I start every day by checking that my team of 60 are still alive – not just what they’re working on that day, but that they’re still breathing. That they’ve not had any bad news overnight. Sometimes, given how unreliable the electricity is, it can take a while to hear back. The Girls team is scattered across Ukraine and a big part of our work centres on reaching communities in more remote areas of the country, where other, larger aid organisations aren’t already in place.
Everyone's clicking on...
Now that we’re a year into the war, somehow we’ve all adapted to our ‘new normal’. The first month or so was completely disorientating, but then we all had to tell ourselves ‘okay, time to get back to work’, ‘okay, you need to care of your family’ and – I think this is the hardest one for women especially – ‘okay, you need to care for yourself too’. If you’re not supporting yourself, there’s no chance of surviving right now. It’s a truth that I’ve had to personally learn too, as well as pass on to others.
At one point, I was working so much that I woke up with terrible back pain and could barely move. It was a lesson in delegating and it being okay to lean on others more. All women in Ukraine are leaning on one another to get through. On a practical level, we’ve also all had to get used to having electricity or the internet for only a few hours a day, or sometimes go without entirely. It means if you’re a mother you only have a couple of hours to cook, clean, work and do it all for your family with the lights or heating on, whilst constantly waiting for news from the frontline. We have a curfew too, starting at either 10pm, 11pm, or midnight in most regions and usually ending at 5am.
We live without the ability to plan. You can try to have a schedule, but at any time there could be a bombing or an attack which means everyone has to run to the shelter, or jump in the car and drive away. We’re always ready. We have backpacks by the door in case of an emergency. Every family in Ukraine does.
This ability to drive away from danger – or towards help – and be mobile in general, is something Girls really want to offer to more women. Many have cars in their family that are sitting unused now that their husbands, boyfriends, or fathers are away in the army. They don’t know how to drive and those living in small villages can’t get to the bigger towns or cities for things like a doctor appointment, or to work. Often there’s only one bus a day.
Girls, with funding from ActionAid, have already paid for one hundred women to have driving lessons and 98% passed their exam, but we know the demand is so much higher: within the first few hours of launching the scheme, we had over 2,000 requests. We’re working hard on getting more funding, as well as carrying out campaigns to change the way women and girls see themselves too. We want to empower them to know they have other options besides solely being mothers or wives, something our recent research found many still believe is their primary purpose in life. We want to tackle mental health stigma too, as well as these old gender stereotypes.
Cases of domestic and sexual violence have risen in Ukraine, in part due to the stress of war. We’re doing a lot of work in that field. When tensions run high, who do you lash out at? Those nearest to you. Many women won’t go to the police though, as they think it’s not important given the ongoing war – but we tell them that they are important, and offer legal and psychological support as well. For me, working with a therapist to keep my own mental health strong has been a very positive thing. We have psychological support available at all our women’s clubs too, where women can meet and talk, and over the phone. People come to us with all different problems. Last year one woman came to us while pregnant. She was seeking an abortion because her house had been destroyed by Russians and she felt no hope for the future, was alone and had no work. But Girls supported her and she changed her mind, the baby was born a couple of weeks ago.
I want the people of the UK to know that sometimes, if Ukrainians are coming off as aggressive, it’s only because we’re living in such stressful conditions. The lack of resources is hard to cope with, it's very challenging to only have lights and electricity for two hours a day, while keeping on top of your mental health and caring for a family. Even talking normally to people feels difficult on some days. We are a stressed – but proud and resilient – nation right now.
"We arrived thinking it would be temporary, I only packed two weeks' worth of clothes"
Inna Gordiienko, 30, has been living in Littlehampton, West Sussex, with her husband and corgi named Cooper for just over a year. She is training to be a psychotherapist and works as a Community Outreach Officer for the International Rescue Committee UK, supporting other Ukrainians as they settle in the UK.
This has been the toughest year of my life. Everything has changed from my home to my appearance – I’ve noticed grey hairs for the first time. As my husband is British, we were told to leave Ukraine before the war officially broke out, due to increasing conflict; many commonwealth countries, like Canada, Australia and the UK, announced their citizens must depart Ukraine by a certain date. The biggest challenge we faced was getting the correct papers in order for our dog as there was no way on earth I would’ve left him behind.
At the time, we were living in Kyiv and had a great life there, with my family close by and lots of friends. I enjoyed my role working for the Australian embassy. We settled in Littlehampton last February because we already had a house there. We arrived almost exactly a week before war was declared, thinking it would be temporary. I only packed two weeks' worth of clothes. Although it was a house we owned, it was never somewhere I viewed as a ‘second home’, it was more just a place to crash when visiting relatives. I can’t believe it’s been a year and we’re still here, with no end in sight.
When we first arrived, I was constantly glued to my phone, refreshing social media, messaging loved ones to check they were okay and scouring news sites. My husband had to remind me to eat, sleep and shower. I obsessed over trying to find out more information. I was just in survival mode – if you asked me now what I spent last March doing, I honestly couldn’t tell you. I’ve experienced shelling before myself, between 2015 and 2017, when I was assigned a conflict monitoring mission for work. When I left that job and moved to a safer area of Ukraine, I distinctly remember making a wish that none of my friends or family would ever have to go through anything like that. So, when I woke up to news of war, I was angry at the universe. I made a wish for this to never, ever happen to the people I love. Yet it has. Why?
Now I try to limit the information I take in about the war, if I can. It can be really tough to balance it with my work, helping Ukrainian refugees acclimatise to the UK. There’ve been times where, for example, there’s been shelling just 200 metres away from where my mum lives and by pure luck, she wasn’t home or out on the streets. In those moments I’m thinking ‘Oh my god, I have a group to help integrate in an hour, but I need to get myself together first. How can I do that?’. In those moments, my psychology training helps. I just try to think rationally like, okay I’m in a safe place and so is my mum, yes she’s unnerved but we’re both okay.
My job helps me to stay motivated and feel like I’m giving back to my country. Around 90% of the people I work with are women and children, who need help with things like finding work or accessing the healthcare system. The NHS is different to the private healthcare system we have in Ukraine and I remember one woman not realising it’s normal to sometimes have to wait weeks for an appointment here. She was so upset thinking it was because refugees are putting a strain on the system, not government cuts and the pandemic, that when I explained it to her she burst into tears. She was so afraid of being a burden. Other days are lighter, and we laugh at the cultural differences. A big one I remember from Christmastime was having to explain to Ukrainians that if you get given a Body Shop bundle as a gift, it doesn’t mean the person who gave it to you thinks you smell bad! I had to ask my husband that initially too, I was so confused as to why people were giving me bubble bath and lotions.
I’ve managed to go back to Ukraine twice, the first time was last June and I flew into Warsaw, Poland, then caught a train to Kyiv – I was genuinely scared the entire time. I was just thinking ‘if there are missiles fired by Russia, they’re all going to hit my train’. It was surreal seeing the streets of our capital city so deserted, for the first time ever there was no traffic, but it was so nice being able to hug my loved ones again. In a way, I sometimes worry that my friends and family have adapted too well to the war – at the very beginning, they were all going into basements and shelters any time the alarms sounded, or they could hear shelling. Now they’ve gotten so used to it, they just listen out for the sounds and read the news, and if they see it’s far enough away, they don't really care. They just keep on doing their thing.
I am supporting my mum financially right now and paying for her flat, something I did before the war started too. She has a low-paying job. Ukraine is still figuring out its economy and most of my female friends, especially those living in Europe or Canada, also support their families back home. It's very difficult to explain to older generations that it's okay to leave and that their safety is priority. They’ve spent all their lives trying to save up enough money to buy a property and have somewhere comfortable to call their own, and all of a sudden, people are now coming in and trying to push them out of that home.
Most Ukrainians that come to the UK will return as soon as it’s safe to do so. We didn’t come here because our lives were horrible in Ukraine before. My life was perfect. We still want to restore our country. In the meantime, please offer us support – we are all dealing with a lot. I would love it if people could treat us less as refugees, but more as guests. Guests who will one day leave.
Click here to find out more about how you can support the people of Ukraine
Jennifer Savin is Cosmopolitan UK's multiple award-winning Features Editor, who was crowned Digital Journalist of the Year for her work tackling the issues most important to young women. She regularly covers breaking news, cultural trends, health, the royals and more, using her esteemed connections to access the best experts along the way. She's grilled everyone from high-profile politicians to A-list celebrities, and has sensitively interviewed hundreds of people about their real life stories. In addition to this, Jennifer is widely known for her own undercover investigations and campaign work, which includes successfully petitioning the government for change around topics like abortion rights and image-based sexual abuse. Jennifer is also a published author, documentary consultant (helping to create BBC’s Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next?) and a patron for Y.E.S. (a youth services charity). Alongside Cosmopolitan, Jennifer has written for The Times, Women’s Health, ELLE and numerous other publications, appeared on podcasts, and spoken on (and hosted) panels for the Women of the World Festival, the University of Manchester and more. In her spare time, Jennifer is a big fan of lipstick, leopard print and over-ordering at dinner. Follow Jennifer on Instagram, X or LinkedIn.
