A woman injured in a Russian attack lies on the street in Kharkiv, Ukraine, April 15, 2022.
Kyiv – Forty-one-year-old Valentyna Pusyčová from Kyiv was shot dead on February 27, 2022, near the city of Brovary in the Kyiv region, when she went to pick up an injured defender. Forty-five-year-old Ilona Kurovská died on March 24, 2022, while distributing humanitarian aid near Buče, when her car hit a mine. Thirty-nine-year-old Viktorija Jaryšková was killed by Russian shelling of Kherson on December 15, 2022, when she was distributing bread to local people. This is written today by the Ukrainska Pravda server, which describes the fate of some women who participated in the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion.
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Photo gallery: Russian invasion of Ukraine
Ilona Kurovská studied history at the Taras Ševčenko National University in Kyiv, later also economics, and on February 1, 2022, she received a doctorate in the field of international law. In the last year of his life, he still headed the legislative institute of the Ukrainian parliament, the article states. The text for the Ukrainian newspaper was prepared by the Memorial Platform project team, which details the specific fates of people whose lives were claimed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “She wanted to adopt a child. She planned to meet with our mutual friend, who had experience with adoption, to ask how it works,” says Valentyna Osadčová, a friend of Kurovská's, who also confided that her friend helped her escape domestic violence.
However, on the morning of February 24, 2022, the Russian army invaded the country. According to Ukrainska pravda, Kurovská arrived in the village of Klavdijevo-Tarasove on the first day, where she spent a lot of time with her grandparents as a child. On the fourth day, when the Russians had already occupied the village, she organized territorial defense, according to the article, according to which she also accompanied civilians who were leaving the occupied territory through fields and forests. “The kitchen was our headquarters and the radios worked continuously. The house was shaking from the explosions, there was no water or electricity. I asked my daughter to leave because it was scary,” recalls her mother Iryna Kurovská. “She flatly refused: 'I'll get you out, but as for me, this is my job'. Of course I stayed too,” the mother described.
She spoke to her daughter for the last time on March 21, 2022, when she was going to deliver medicine and baby food to the residents of the village. “I remember it clearly: before she got into the car, she crossed herself and said a prayer. Then she didn't hear from me again,” says Kurovská's mother. It later turned out that on March 24, Ilona Kurovská's car ran into a mine. Ukrainian fighters found her body on April 2, after the liberation of the Kyiv region. A twenty-four-year-old volunteer died in the car with her. Before she died, she tried to give him a tourniquet to save him, the website says.
Before the war, Viktorija Jaryšková was engaged in painting on wood, made a living by making and selling souvenirs, led workshops in the local historical center and workshops in the local school. According to her friends, she dreamed of owning her own business. When Kherson was occupied by the Russian army in the spring of last year, Jaryšková, according to Ukrainian Truth, refused to cooperate with the occupation regime and worked as a volunteer in the Kherson branch of the Red Cross. Volunteers, for example, imported medicine from territories controlled by Ukraine, bought food and other goods from Ukrainian producers and distributed them to locals.
In the fall, the Ukrainian army pushed the Russian invasion forces out of Kherson, and the Russians began shelling the city from the opposite bank of the Dnieper River. Jaryšková and her children moved to the Red Cross office. “Those who lived through the occupation together were no longer just colleagues, but family,” said her friend and other volunteer Natalija Šatilovová. “We all knew the risks we were taking. Viktorija knew them too, but she was a fighter,” she added. She last spoke to her friend in mid-December – an hour before her death.
Jaryšková managed to give her and another friend a joint photo in a hand-made frame, after which the women split up and went about their tasks, writes Ukrainska pravda. Viktorija stayed near the office and distributed bread to local people. “After about an hour, I saw that I had a lot of missed calls. When I called my colleague back, she said: 'Something terrible happened. We were bombed. Vika was killed.' Unfortunately, she was not wearing a helmet and suffered a fatal head injury from a shrapnel,” Šatilová describes. An elderly man who was waiting in line for bread was also killed during the Russian attack. The two children left behind by Jaryšková are now being looked after by their father.
Valentyna Pušyčová gave up her job as a manager in an international transport company, joined the Ukrainian armed forces, and since 2016 has been rescuing wounded soldiers from the front line, writes Ukrainska Pravda. Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February, but fighting has been taking place in the east of the country since 2014, when a Moscow-backed separatist uprising broke out there. “She said that she would be more useful there than in Kiev. She talked to her daughter every day – she was ten years old at the time,” says Valentina's mother, Nina Berenoková.
Her daughter served in the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, and her service took her to Avdijivka in the Donetsk region. According to her colleagues, she knew how to organize work and over time took over the duties of the battalion's chief medic. Her task was to evacuate wounded soldiers from the most critical places on the front. Together with the driver, she was able to carry the soldier on her back for a kilometer and a half, the article says. “She saved hundreds of excellent people. Many of them became commanders or deputy commanders of battalions. Unfortunately, many of them were killed after the full invasion began,” said volunteer Oksana Korchynská, who served with Pusyčová.
She in 2018, she decided to complete an officer's course and extend her contract with the army. It is said that Korčynská tried to talk her out of it, saying that it would be better if she spent time with her daughter. However, Pusyčová wanted to serve in the army as long as possible. Her mother last spoke to her three days after the Russian invasion began last year. And an hour before her daughter came under fire on the way to a wounded soldier near Brovar and died together with the driver. A little later, Valentina's daughter called her. However, her colleagues picked up the phone and said that the mother was not alive, the text states, which also details the fate of the 38-year-old member of the Ukrainian army, Viktorija Kiyashchenko, who was killed by a Russian airstrike in mid-March last year in Volnovash.
