As Ukrainian men head off to fight, women take up their jobs

OKSANA SAYS she has placed her life on hold. Covid-19 took her mother and her husband two years ago. Russian artillery took her father and her oldest son this spring. “I’ve immersed myself in my work,” she says, 480 metres under the outskirts of Ternivka, a town in eastern Ukraine. The whites of her eyes glow in the surrounding darkness. Back in Bakhmut, the site of one of the war’s most vicious battles, Oksana, aged 49, was a dance teacher at a boarding school for impoverished children. Today, with her former house and hometown destroyed, her school closed, and her closest relatives dead, she is a coal miner.

After the Russians invaded in February 2022, Oksana (her mine’s management asked that the surnames of its workers not be used) escaped to Poland, where she worked as a dishwasher and a cook at a restaurant. But she missed Ukraine. Friends told her the Ternivka mines were looking for new workers, and she signed up. Her new job pays better than most, Oksana says, and offers a good pension. The work also helps her block out the memories, she says, taking a break from shovelling coal. “I want to forget everything.”