More than 57,000 women serve as military personnel in Ukraine's Armed Forces, General Staff says

More than 76,000 women serve in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, including 57,000 military personnel, while the remainder hold civilian positions, the General Staff said in response to an inquiry from the Kyiv Independent.

While military service for women in Ukraine is voluntary, women aged 18 to 60 with medical or pharmaceutical education have been required to register with the military since October 2023. As a result, they may be called up for military service if they meet the relevant requirements.

Since March 2026, the number of women serving in the military has increased by about 1,000. At the time, more than 75,000 women were serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, including 55,000 active-duty service members, according to the General Staff.

As of September 2026, more than 20,000 of the 57,000 female service members hold combat positions, the General Staff told the Kyiv Independent.

"When we talk about 'combat roles,' we shouldn't reduce women's role in the war to simply being in the trenches. Modern warfare encompasses a very broad spectrum of military professions," Oksana Hryhorieva, the gender affairs advisor for the Ukrainian Armed Forces,  told the Kyiv Independent.

"These include drone pilots, reconnaissance specialists, medics, signalers, artillerywomen, military psychologists, electronic warfare specialists, and many other roles."

As of 2026, four women in Ukraine hold the rank of general.

Tetiana Ostashchenko, who served as commander of the Medical Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from 2021 to 2023, became the first woman to receive the rank of brigadier general and the first woman to head the military medical service of the Armed Forces. Ostashchenko was promoted to general by presidential decree on Aug. 24, 2021, before the start of Russia's full-scale invasion.

The other two women generals, Yuliia Laputina and Liudmyla Shuhalei, received the rank of major general while serving in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in 2018 and 2020, respectively. Meanwhile, Tetiana Podashevska received the rank of militia general in 2004 for her service in the Interior Ministry.

"It is important that a woman in the military today has the opportunity to go through the entire professional path — from soldier to the highest officer positions. And this is a fundamental change compared with the past," Hryhorieva said.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, the number of women serving in the military has nearly doubled. Yet women have been part of Ukraine's armed forces since the beginning of Russia's war against Ukraine in 2014. They could serve in combat roles in practice, but legal restrictions meant they were officially listed as holding rear-echelon positions until 2018, when those limitations were lifted.

According to Hryhorieva, an important factor was that, with the start of the all-out war, many women realized that defending the state was not a matter of gender, but of personal choice. At the same time, the state opened access to all military specialties and positions to women.

The nature of the war has also played a role, as the modern military is not only about physical strength, but also technology, intelligence, cybersecurity, medicine, communications, and analysis — fields in which women can serve, Hryhorieva added.

"Today, we are seeing not simply an increase in the number of women in the military. We are seeing a change in the culture of the Ukrainian military itself," the advisor said.

"Gender equality in Ukraine's Armed Forces is not about having women make up a 'certain percentage.' It is about ensuring that everyone who is ready to serve Ukraine has equal access to opportunities, positions, and professional development — and that they are evaluated based on their performance, not their gender."