Women Fighting Putin’s Troops Reveal Their Agonizing Secrets

KYIV—Vladimir Putin’s war has been grueling for hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting against Russian troops on the front lines—but the invasion has been particularly brutal on the roughly 60,000 women serving in the Ukrainian army, according to multiple sources who spoke with The Daily Beast.

Besides the regular horrors of war, Ukrainian women who spoke with The Daily Beast said that the lack of appropriate equipment and resources for female soldiers often puts them in greater danger than their male counterparts—including ill-fitting uniforms, boots, body armor, and tools to help them relieve themselves on the battlefield.

“Try to go to the toilet in the woods at 4 degrees Fahrenheit... All of us got cystitis or inflammation of the ovaries and back pain,” one 24-year-old Ukrainian soldier, Julia, told The Daily Beast in Kyiv this week. “After a year of the war we have a bouquet of all sorts of health issues.” (Julia and several other women who spoke with The Daily Beast for this story asked to be identified only by their first names.)

Read more at The Daily Beast.