ON THE FRONT LINE

More than a year has passed since Russian troops invaded Kyiv. In February 2022, Yulia Bondarenko was a schoolteacher and had never even held a gun. This is the story of what happened when she left her classroom to defend her city

Just over a year ago, Yulia Bondarenko’s days were full of lesson plans, grading and the hormones of her 12- to 13-year-old students. When Russian missiles shattered that routine and Russian troops threatened her home in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, Bondarenko, 30, volunteered to fight back, despite her lack of experience, the grave risk to her life and Ukraine’s apparently impossible odds.

“I never held a rifle in my hands and never even saw one up close,” said Bondarenko. “In the first two weeks, I felt like I was in a fog. It was just a constant nightmare.”

For weeks, she had followed the ominous news of Russian troops massing on Ukraine’s border and decided on February 23 to enlist as a reservist. The next day, the largest land war in Europe since World War II began.

As explosions shook Kyiv, Bondarenko took the subway to report for duty, uncertain the recruiting office would take her without finished paperwork or a fitness exam.

But officers asked no questions. They handed her a rifle and 120 bullets and assigned her to a unit expecting to fight in urban combat if the Russian Army broke into the capital. She was only one recruit in a huge influx of volunteers who swelled the size of Ukrainian forces from about 260,000 soldiers to about one million today, and whose lives were transformed by the war.

In a recent interview, Bondarenko recalled the intense stress of those early days. Unaccustomed to the sounds of artillery, she said she expected to be hit after every blast. She thought she would die.

Step by step she learnt how to be a soldier. Fellow volunteers showed her how to load, aim and fire her Kalashnikov rifle. They practised trench fighting and other tactics.