With 60,000 women, including 5,000 on the front lines, the Ukrainian army is one of the most feminized armed forces in Europe, said Deputy Defense Minister of Ukraine Hanna Malyar. However, military women have specific service problems, some of which have not yet been resolved.

On the American news site The Daily Beast, women in the Ukrainian armed forces describe the additional and unexpected challenges of daily frontline service when you are not a man. They talk about bulky men’s boots, bad form, lack of tampons, inability to urinate while sitting in the trenches.

“Try going to the toilet in the forest at minus 15 degrees,” says 24-year-old Yulia, a military serviceman. “We’ve all had bladder or ovarian infections and back pain. After a year of war, we have many health problems of all kinds.” But not being able to relieve oneself is “the least of our problems,” added Alina, Yulia’s older sister.

The problem of body armor

Two women left their jobs as technicians to join the struggle for the liberation of Ukraine. They also say they get too big uniforms, “huge” pants that prevent them from being fast enough in critical moments.

And “the most difficult thing is to walk in a standard army body armor weighing 15 kg, which with breasts like mine simply never sits on the body,” Alina tells the cited publication.

“If I take off my military vest and I’m injured or killed, there will be no compensation for me or my family,” she says. This is a flaw that can have fatal consequences. “Our life, our safety, often depends on what we wear on our bodies and feet and whether we are healthy.”

Runa, a 28-year-old volunteer who once worked as a florist in Kyiv and now heads an artillery unit, said she wore a uniform that was four sizes too big for her small figure. Last year, Ukrainian servicemen complained that they had to wear men’s underwear and were issued overcoats with too wide sleeves.

New donations from the government

In response to the complaints, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov last week promised to order more uniforms and helmets for women, as well as new models for testing in combat units. But there are also private initiatives that want to help.

Andriy Kolesnyk is the founder of one such initiative, which aims to provide women military personnel with appropriate and comfortable uniforms. However, his group currently only has the means to equip about 10 percent of the approximately 9,000 female soldiers whose missions are particularly dangerous.

Women need hundreds of things, Kolesnyk said, but the priority right now is a uniform. Just to dress everyone in summer uniforms, including shoes, they need the equivalent of around €830,000. He notes, “Their effectiveness and safety depends on how freely they can move, run, crawl, load a weapon, or fly a drone.”

Kolesnyk also reports on requests from military servicewomen in their seventh month of pregnancy: “Currently, I have requests for sewing uniforms and other necessary items from at least ten pregnant women. We are running out of stock on every item,” he told The Daily Beast.

Special innovations

The most that Ukraine has learned from this war is the art of improvisation. Now there is also a solution to the nagging toilet problem faced by female soldiers on the front line.

“Feminine Urinary Director” is a kind of funnel that also allows women to urinate standing up if necessary. It’s a container invented by a female soldier who knows the problem firsthand.

The invasion of Russia and the existential threat to Ukraine led to an influx of female volunteers. This influx created problems for the traditionally male sphere of the Ukrainian army, problems that have not yet been solved.

According to Kyiv’s estimates, 107 female soldiers have died since the beginning of the war – during combat, during evacuation or escorting press groups.