It's a dirty job, but Ukraine's women are doing it for the war effort

Before the war started, the government barred women from doing jobs underground because it considered the work too physically demanding. But after many male miners joined the military early in the war and others were later conscripted, the Soviet-era policy was scrapped.

Moskalenko, who wears lipstick and eyeliner to work, operates the cable cars that move workers and supplies across the mine’s vast 75-mile tunnel network.

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It was not “hard physically, but it’s a very responsible job,” she said, adding that she has to “react quickly” if anything goes wrong. “You can’t miss anything and [have] to be very attentive and responsible.”

At her mine alone, 700 of the 3,000 male workers went off to fight, according to Alyona Lapina, a communications manager at DTEK, the mine’s owner and Ukraine’s largest private energy firm. She added that 71 had been killed and 200 were wounded.

The mine is near the eastern Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014. Since then, the Donbas, which is made up of the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, has been used as a staging post for Russian attacks into Ukraine. Putin illegally annexed them in September 2022 along with the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. Ukrainian forces are still fighting to regain control of all four territories.

Elevator operator Iryna Basanets, 38, said she also joined up after the war began. Since then, she said, the women and men had learned to work together.

“The boys help us,” she said. “We are sweeping here, cleaning, keeping our working space clean and tidy.”

But war is always close, with an air raid siren sounding shortly after miners returned to the surface for lunch on Thursday.

The coal they mine is used primarily to power Ukrainian electricity and heating stations, key energy infrastructure that has come under frequent Russian attacks and is now the subject of a proposed temporary ceasefire accepted by Ukraine and partially agreed to by Putin.

Previous Russian attacks on energy infrastructure like power stations and substations had led to blackouts, Basanets said, leaving miners underground with no electricity or cellphone signal, though they were eventually brought back to the surface.

“We always store water in advance,” she said, adding that some blackouts are scheduled.