Authors

Kateryna Boyko¹;  ¹ Uppsala University, Sweden

Discussion

“We are the Kyiv Valkyries and we will send you all to hell”. This is how armed young women in camouflage from a female territorial defence unit video-addressed the Russian military in late February 2022. The rapid intensification of the Russo-Ukrainian War, ongoing since 2014, to a full-scale invasion, not only posed multiple new challenges for Ukrainian women but also became a moment of crisis that has led to rearticulation of the current femininity models.
The paper focuses on the visual representation of women’s war experience in Ukraine and the implications it had for Ukrainian women’s identity. In particular, it aims to discuss how femininity is constructed through images disseminated via social media during the wartime and what cultural references have been applied, contested, and rearticulated there. 
Semiotic analysis of the visuals shows that Ukrainian women are usually portrayed as a triad – three characters with different functions. First of all, the aggressive, militarist, and simultaneously eroticised Valkyrie; then Madonna – a protective figure; third is the Witch – a chthonic entity with supernatural powers able to rule the fate. All the three roles merge in metaphoric visual depictions of Ukraine itself making women a symbol of Ukrainian resistance. The images tend to redefine traditional female roles and emphasize women’s agency and empowerment in the times of crisis.