‘This world was created by men for men’: How Ukrainian women are changing the military

Sidorova, known by the call sign Cuba, first went to war in 2014. Since returning after the full-scale invasion, she has helped push for military uniforms designed for women and worked to introduce ground robots for evacuating wounded soldiers - part of a broader transformation she says is often driven from the bottom up.

‘Fashion became intertwined with war’

Sidorova’s relationship with the military began long before Russia’s full-scale invasion.

She first went to war in 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine and began its occupation of Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region. She left military service in 2019 and turned to fashion, developing her own clothing brand and presenting it at Ukrainian Fashion Week on Feb. 6, 2022.

Then Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Sidorova returned to the military and, together with the Ukrainian women veterans’ movement VETERANKA, helped set up a workshop producing military uniforms designed specifically for women.

The need, she says, was practical rather than cosmetic.

“A lot of people don’t understand what the difference is and why women need military uniforms when men’s uniforms already exist,” Sidorova said. “But you can’t just take a men’s uniform and put it on.”

Women had been raising the issue since 2014, she said, with little result. A uniform designed around a different body can restrict movement or simply fail to fit properly - problems that become considerably more serious in combat.

“When we’re talking about combat missions in particular, comfort can become a matter of survival,” Sidorova said. “But beyond that, it’s also a question of dignity and equal rights.”

The Ukrainian military has since made progress in providing equipment for women, but gaps remain. Of the 42 items in the standard combat kit issued to service members, only two currently have versions specifically designed for women.

Ukraine’s experience reaches NATO allies

Ukraine’s efforts to adapt military equipment for women have also attracted attention abroad.

Arm Women Now has presented Ukrainian women’s military clothing and equipment at NATO headquarters and in several European countries, including the Netherlands.

At a 2025 exhibition in Utrecht, Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans was among senior officials shown Ukrainian summer and winter uniforms, body armor, thermal underwear and other equipment adapted for female service members.

“Over 60,000 women serve in the Ukrainian army, many at the front,” Brekelmans wrote after the event. “Arm Women Now has developed unique uniforms for female soldiers.”

“And a lot can still be done in the Netherlands!”

Nykorak said the Ukrainian presentations have prompted European military officials to examine how well their own forces are equipped for women.

She recalled a Dutch general responding to the Ukrainian equipment by asking: “If Ukrainians can do it, why can’t we?”

According to Nykorak, the Netherlands began developing its own women’s military uniform in March 2026.

For her, the experience shows an unusual reversal: Ukraine has spent years drawing on the practices of NATO militaries while reforming its own armed forces, but its wartime experience is now producing lessons that some of those allies can take back home.

From ‘I don’t take women’ to ‘We’re keeping them’

Equipment is only part of the transformation. Attitudes toward women in Ukraine’s military have changed too - although not always at the same pace.

When Russia’s war against Ukraine began in 2014, women were not legally permitted to hold many combat positions. That did not mean they were not fighting.

Women served as combat medics, snipers and reconnaissance soldiers, Cuba said, while officially being registered in positions such as seamstresses or cooks. Years of advocacy by women veterans eventually helped open combat positions to them.

But formal rules were only part of the problem.

When Cuba joined Ukraine’s 92nd Brigade in 2022 with two other women, she recalled that the brigade commander initially had a simple position: “I don’t take women.”

The three joined anyway.

It did not take long for his attitude to change.

“I respect them so much. They’re a force!” Cuba recalled him saying later.

When the men from the group they had arrived with were subsequently reassigned to other brigades, the commander had a different response when it came to the women.

“We’re not giving these ones away,” Cuba recalled him saying. “They’re staying with us.”

For Cuba, the story illustrates how much the experience of women in the military can still depend on individual commanders.

She recalled serving under one battalion commander who made a point of ensuring that other soldiers treated her with respect. When he was later replaced, she said, the atmosphere changed - and some of those around her quickly adjusted their behavior to match the new commander.

“A lot depends on the individual person, on the commander,” Cuba said.

Technology is changing who can fight

The nature of the war itself is changing some of the old assumptions about who can perform combat roles.

One argument Cuba has repeatedly heard against women serving in such positions centers on physical strength.

“Men often liked to say, ‘Well, let’s see how she’s going to lift that,’” she recalled.

But technology is steadily making that argument less relevant.

“You can now take a controller and use an FPV drone or something else to destroy the enemy or save a life,” Cuba said. “For a woman, that won’t be any more difficult than it is for a man.”

Cuba is now working with Ukraine’s 39th Marine Brigade on another technology reshaping the battlefield: unmanned ground vehicles used to evacuate wounded soldiers.

She was among the early advocates for using the vehicles in casualty evacuation and has been involved in testing them. Traditionally, getting a wounded soldier off the battlefield has required several people to carry them under fire - putting the evacuation team itself at risk.

A ground robot can take on part of that job without exposing another soldier to the same danger.

For Cuba, this is part of a broader change. As technology takes over tasks that once depended heavily on physical strength, some of the traditional barriers to women serving in combat roles become harder to justify.

Equality - including its uncomfortable questions

For Cuba, greater equality in the military also raises a more contentious question: who is required to serve.

Under Ukraine’s current mobilization system, military service is compulsory for eligible men, while women generally serve voluntarily. Cuba says that difference can itself create a sense of inequality.

“I often get hate when I say that men need to be mobilized,” she said. “And when I say women should be mobilized - even more so.”

She argues that women who are motivated and properly prepared can succeed in military roles, particularly as technology reduces some of the physical barriers that once limited who could perform certain tasks.

The debate is a difficult one in a country that has been fighting a full-scale war for more than four years. But for Cuba, it is difficult to separate it from the broader question of equality.

“This world was created by men for men,” she said. “But it will inevitably be diluted by women, because we simply have no other way.”

Change from the bottom up

For Cuba, the changes in women’s uniforms, battlefield medicine and unmanned evacuation systems are all examples of the same pattern.

“In our country, in many areas, information moves from the bottom up,” she said.

Someone on the ground identifies a problem and starts looking for a solution. If it works, Cuba said, the idea gradually makes its way upward - until what began as an initiative by a handful of people can become institutional practice.

That was the case with tactical medicine, she said. Women’s military uniforms followed a similar path. Now she sees the same process happening with unmanned ground vehicles used to evacuate wounded troops.

More than a decade after Cuba first went to war, Ukraine’s military is profoundly different from the one she joined in 2014. Women can formally serve in combat roles once closed to them. Equipment is increasingly being adapted to their needs. New technology is changing what soldiers need to be physically capable of doing.

The process is far from complete. But for Cuba, waiting for the system to change first was never really the point.

Change, she says, usually starts with the people who decide to make something work.