First Russian all-female volunteer unit to be deployed to Ukraine

In a first for the country, authorities in Russia’s Far Eastern Primorsky region have announced the creation of an all-female military unit, which will serve as part of the Tiger volunteer brigade actively fighting in Ukraine.

The five-woman detachment includes the head of the region’s Olginsky municipal district, Yekaterina Vannikova, and will reportedly serve in medical support roles, according to regional Governor Oleg Kozhemyako, who announced the move in a social media post Monday.

“All of them have long been asking to volunteer for the front… they literally flooded the [military] command with letters asking to be included”, said Kozhemyako, who oversees the Tiger volunteer brigade.

In September 2022, Vannikova made headlines after residents sued her for broadcasting patriotic songs from loudspeakers on a government building following the Kremlin’s partial mobilisation announcement.

According to local human rights activist Maxim Chikhunov, Vannikova used municipal funds to purchase a luxury SUV for 3.5 million rubles (then approx. €50,000) in December 2022, at a time when the district was reeling from record snowfall and emergency services had been forced to evacuate some residents by helicopter.

Speaking in a video posted to Kozhemyako’s Telegram channel, Vannikova noted that she had helped local soldiers “since the very beginning of the special military operation”, referring to the war in Ukraine, and that she had “always wanted to be there” and had made her decision to go to the front “a long time ago”.

No official statistics exist regarding the number of Russian servicewomen who are currently active combatants in Ukraine. In March 2023, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu suggested that of the total 39,000 women serving in the Russian military, some 1,100 had been deployed to Ukraine. That summer, a joint investigative report by independent media outlets Meduza and Mediazona found that out of nearly 47,000 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, only four had been women.