Ukraine /
In ancient Norse mythology, “valkyries” illuminated the horror of war with their beauty and strength. Today in the Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskythe myth of these warrior women emerges again incarnated in small groups of civilian women who train in combat tactics. They call themselves “valkyries”.
After thirty months of fighting, the war that Ukraine is experiencing with Russia has caused the militarization of social life and the tightening of a new mass mobilization law, which has led to dozens of thousands of soldiers fleeing the horrors of war by sneaking across borders.
Given this context, every week around twenty women meet convinced that this training – holding a rifle and shooting at the enemy – will save their lives one day and that at some point they will be the ones who have to go out and fight for their neighborhood, their home and their family.
They are wives of soldiers fighting on the front lines of the war, students, widows, even retired workers. They all have something in common: the fear that war will return again. Kyiv.
They are not women-soldier real and it is not their desire to join Zelensky’s army, but they are training for a battle that, although it seems distant, is rooted in the collective imagination. Thus, they are convinced of doing a service to the motherland, to mother Ukraine.
