A woman in high heels kissing a man in a military uniform may sound like something out of a World War II movie, but in eastern Ukraine it has become a part of everyday life.
It’s been three years since Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, and life is becoming increasingly difficult for Ukrainian soldiers fighting on the front lines and their wives waiting at home.
Oksana and Artem had been married for just 18 months when the war broke out. Artem had joined the Ukrainian army.
They dreamed of having children too. However, Artem only got a few vacations from time to time.
So Oksana, who lives in her home village near the capital, Kiev, had no choice but to travel hundreds of kilometers to meet her husband.
She first goes to Kharkiv and then arrives in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine where her husband is stationed so she can spend some moments of love with him.
Their first ‘meeting’ was in April 2022. They had a second meeting in November of the same year. Artem was injured at the time and Oksana had a missed carriage.
Oksana was having these meetings regularly so that they could have children. However, her husband had concerns about Oksana’s safety.
“I couldn’t imagine a life in which I wouldn’t meet him. I only felt alive on the days when I met him,” Oksana told BBC News Ukraine.
The pair would meet in a village or town near the battlefield, where local citizens would often offer them a free night in their homes. These deserted houses were previously occupied by families.
“It was a joy to meet my husband, but it was sad to see the pictures of strangers around me. All these lives were destroyed by the war,” says Oksana.
Rising divorce rate
Since the beginning of the Ukrainian war, many families in the country have been rapidly breaking up.
The United Nations says six million Ukrainians have fled the country. That’s about 15 percent of the pre-war population. The majority of those leaving are women and children. Under martial law, men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave Ukraine.
Soldiers deployed in the army can take up to 30 days of annual leave, while 10 additional days are given for unusual family commitments.
As couples and families spend less time together, the birth rate has declined dramatically.
Ukraine became an independent country with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. That year, 630,000 babies were born in Ukraine.
Since then, the birth rate has been gradually declining, and during 2019, 309,000 children were born in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s birth rate fell to a historic low in 2023 after the war began, with only 187,000 babies born that year.
Meanwhile, the divorce rate in Ukraine has also increased. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice, the divorce rate increased by 50% in the first six months of 2024 compared to the same period last year.
Many women believe that meeting their husbands near the battlefield is the only way they can maintain their marriages and families.
Husband forced by duty
The journey to meet soldiers deployed on the front lines is not easy. It involves traveling hundreds of kilometers and involves many dangers.
Women often travel by train to a nearby city and travel the rest of the way by bus or taxi.
They sometimes spend a lot of time traveling and the meeting time is very short. A soldier gets a short break during his service when he is not on leave.
Natalia traveled 1,230 kilometers to meet her husband, from the western Ukrainian city of Lviv to the eastern city of Kramatorsk.
She spent two days, or more than 50 hours, on this journey, just so she could have a brief meeting with her husband. During this time, there was continuous shelling in the five surrounding border areas, so her husband had to return to duty.
“We only spent 50 minutes together on the platform,” Natalia says, wiping away tears. “Then they put me back on the same train I had arrived on.”
The trip cost her up to $120. That’s a quarter of the average monthly salary in Ukraine. She says that despite that, she tries to visit her husband every two to three months.
The two have been married for 22 years and have two children. “This trip is the only way I can feel like part of a family.”
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But not all such couples’ meetings ended well.
Some women made dangerous journeys to meet their husbands, only to discover upon arrival that their husbands had established relationships with another woman in a frontline village, or that they had taken a woman as their ‘field wife’.
When Russia launched a proxy war against Ukraine in 2014, it occupied parts of eastern Ukraine. Maria (not her real name) had her husband fighting on the front lines. She would travel three days from Kiev to eastern Ukraine to meet him, but things started to deteriorate. Maria’s husband suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD).
When he returned home, he began abusing Maria and the children. He began having relationships with other women. Soon, the two divorced.
Now Maria is the wife of another soldier. She is not a fan of the long journey to see her husband.
“Meeting on the front row doesn’t save a family. You can only save it if both people want it,” she says.
The fruit of patience
Oksana recently gave birth to a baby boy. She had previously had two miscarriages. Her family had long wanted a child.
Oksana wanted her husband Artem to be with her during the birth, but he couldn’t get time off work.
Before the birth of the child, she said, “Every woman would want her husband to be with her at such a time.”
“But here I am, taking care of our child. I know my husband will be where he needs to be.”
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