Having served on the front line for eight years with the Ukrainian armed forces, 29-year-old Anna Tuyenova is used to having few possessions and moving around frequently. In some ways, today is no different: the bare necessities of her life are packed into one large black suitcase and a couple of small bags, which she’s brought as one of the first arrivals at a new purpose-built shelter for displaced pregnant women in Lviv in western Ukraine. These hold the remnants of her life in the city of Lysychansk in the country’s east, which she and her two-year-old daughter Milena fled in late May.
“I’m turning 30 tomorrow,” Anna says, beaming as Milena bounces up and down in a cot in their sun-drenched room on an afternoon in late July. The shelter, located on the outskirts of Lviv, is so new the walls still give off the faint scent of freshly-cut wood. Outside, it is tranquil and secluded. A smattering of trees surrounds the two complexes, which can house up to 100 mothers and their children. For now, Anna and Milena have the whole room to themselves but when the shelter begins filling up, another mother and child will occupy the second bunk bed. Anna has no big plans for her birthday but hopes to cook a simple meal. “I’ll share it with my friend — she’s also a woman soldier, and she has a day off tomorrow,” she explains.
Dressed in a light-blue checked shirt that is taut around her baby bump, and blue trousers, Anna smiles often. In particular, she lights up when talking about her experiences in the military, where she served until she found out she was pregnant, just two weeks before the Russian invasion began on February 24. She is currently seven months pregnant and on maternity leave.
“I don’t have relatives left except Milena and Ivan,” she says, referring to her unborn son. Anna has never met her father nor does she have any siblings. With the death of her mother three years ago, she was hit with the sudden realisation that she wanted to have a child. “I got pregnant nine months later, and he [Milena’s father] didn’t want to see me again, not even in the hospital. He didn’t want to be present in her life,” she says matter-of-factly.
Anna calls her conscription into the military an accident. Before 2014, she had been employed in two separate jobs as a translator and accountant in Kyiv. Then she met Milena’s father, a soldier deployed to a battalion in the Luhansk province of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. At the time, armed conflict had just erupted there between pro-Russian separatist groups and Ukrainian government forces. With the surge in nationalism and a partner on the front, Anna decided it was the right moment for her to join the Ukrainian fight against Russian influence. Now, she says she can’t imagine working in any other setting.
“I followed him [her ex-partner] to Lysychansk, and got used to fighting very quickly. I’ve seen everything, and now nothing can shock me,” she says. Her first deployment was in the Luhansk I battalion in Lysychansk, fighting for months at a time in the trenches. She vividly remembers her hands shaking the first time she fired her rifle at enemy troops, even though she says she had been a very good shooter during her training. “When you’re in combat, you learn to differentiate between different kinds of sounds — whether its tanks, air raids or other vehicles — in the same way you learn to identify birdsong.”
In 2019, even though she was heavily pregnant and just one month from giving birth to Milena, she remained at work. “I was serving as a telecommunications technician in Avdiivka [a front-line town in Donbas], and my commander just wouldn’t let me go on maternity leave,” she laughs, adding that the situation was critical at the time and that there were fears Avdiivka would be seized by Russian-backed forces.
She is safe in Lviv, but she often thinks about returning to the front line. She yearns for the strong sense of purpose and duty she felt in the army, though in the past it has meant having to relinquish her parenting duties to the state for extended periods of time. For the moment, she is preoccupied with finding a kindergarten for Milena, as none she has contacted in Lviv so far will accept a child as young as she is. Ivan is also starting to get bigger, causing her discomfort as she moves around. She rarely has time to cook or do anything else, as Milena is particularly demanding of her attention.
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