July 27, 2026:
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, attitudes towards Ukrainian women in the military quickly changed. Women wanted to serve and sometimes had to find backdoors they could slip through. While the government encouraged women to take military assignments, some women responded to online requests from Ukrainian combat units for people with critical skills. If a woman had the skills and applied, she was usually accepted. While men were conscripted, women had to volunteer, and a growing number did. Currently, about 60,000 female volunteers are in uniform, and that number was nearly 70,000 earlier in the war. Six percent of snipers are women, as are 23 percent of drone operators and support personnel. Military medical personnel are 22 percent female, and a quarter of military staff personnel are women. This includes the GUR/Intelligence Directorate and SBU/Security Service.
Experience in earlier wars demonstrated that non-combat troops often get exposed to the fighting anyway, and this was more common in the last twenty years. By being kept out of the direct combat jobs, women were much less likely to be killed in combat. Noting that many jobs women were barred from still had about the same casualty rates as those women were already in, the American army expanded the number of specific jobs women could serve in. The most visible result of the change was women serving in support efforts for infantry, tank, artillery, and engineer battalions. As a practical matter, this is nothing new. Women have served in brigade-level support units for several decades, and troops from those units often worked alongside the combat battalions within a brigade for extended periods. The women in combat battalions perform roles such as communications, supply, intelligence, health care, and various staff functions.
A lot more 21st-century women have been showing up in military jobs. Currently, women make up 18 percent of the American Army and Navy, while 24 percent of Air Force personnel are female. Women also qualify for nearly 90 percent of all armed forces jobs. That includes service with Army combat units. Not the Special Operations Forces, but often with the support troops to get the SEALS and Delta Force where they need to go and keep them informed and supplied. At the same time, many female non-combat troops are still exposed to combat and manage to perform their duties without issue.
Russia is also recruiting more women to take care of non-combat jobs. In Western forces, only 10-15 percent of troops are in combat units. In Russia, only half the uniformed forces are support troops; the rest are for combat. Recruiting more women means more men available for combat. While women are willing to join, men are still reluctant because of the high risk of getting killed.
Early in the Ukraine war, Russia revived the World War II practice of employing women as snipers and, since this is the 21st Century, drone operators as well. For service in Ukraine, qualified Russian women can make at least $1,200 a month. That’s a lot of money in contemporary Russia. Russian forces are suffering heavy casualties in Ukraine and are recruiting women for jobs that, in the past, women have been good at and willing to undertake in a combat zone.
This is not the first time Russia has employed women in combat roles. Before Germany invaded in 1941, Russia had several all-female tank battalions. Most of the Russian tank force was destroyed in the first months of the war, and as it was rebuilt, surviving all-female units were disbanded because there were plenty of other combat and combat support jobs for women. That included traffic control along roads and snipers. Women proved particularly good at both jobs.