One of them, a history teacher, leads an artillery battalion. “They fight with all their dignity and as equals,” Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska said in a video call this afternoon with European Council President Charles Michel, among others. But also: “I hope we keep our resilience. After 106 days of war, fatigue sets in.”
Zelenska, a 44-year-old screenwriter who married in 2003 the man who now speaks to the world almost daily via video link, took part in the second edition of ‘Women in conflict’, an EU and UN-hosted debate afternoon with women leaders and survivors of war. According to the first lady, many women work at the front anyway, including as aid workers or doctors. Many doctors and nurses in Ukraine, which has 2 million more women than men, are women, she added. Other women fill in for men at the front, or even continue to teach children from bomb shelters. “Each of us has our own resistance story.”