Ukraine widows count the costs of war: ‘pain becomes part of you’

A support group for Ukraine’s widows gathers donations, offers logistical, moral support and provides a platform for the some one thousand widows countrywide

Neither side has disclosed the exact figures of troops killed, though recently leaked US intelligence documents suggest as many as 17,500 Ukrainian servicemen have been lost

3-MIN READ3-MIN

Ukrainian Olga Slyshyk places a flag in the memory of her killed husband at a makeshfit memorial. Photo: AFP

Published: 9:00pm, 17 Apr 2023Updated: 9:05pm, 17 Apr 2023

Olga Slyshyk began to fear the worst in January this year when her husband, Mykhailo, a military engineer serving on the front line in eastern Ukraine, did not contact her on her birthday.

It was not unusual for the 40-year-old trained lawyer to be offline for days at a time, but Slyshyk knew he would reach out – one way or another – on January 14 if he was alive and well.

“I was sure he would call or find some way to congratulate me. But I had had a very bad dream and I already knew something was wrong,” she said in Kyiv, wearing black and holding her two-year-old son Viktor. “On January 15, I found out he had died.”

Ukrainian Olga Slyshyk shows her phone with a picture of her and her late husband Mykhailo. Photo: AFP

More than one year after Moscow invaded, Slyshyk is among a growing number of women widowed by Russian forces and left to count the cost of Ukraine’s determination to hold out and push Moscow’s invasion back.

Neither side has disclosed the exact figures of troops killed, though recently leaked US intelligence documents suggest as many as 17,500 Ukrainian servicemen have been lost.

Slyshyk, 30, said a social media group for war widows she joined had more than 300 members after her husband was killed defending Soledar in the eastern Donetsk region, but it had doubled in size since.

President Volodymyr Zelensky last August hosted widows and their children at an honours ceremony to reassure next of kin their loved ones’ sacrifice had not been in vain.