When Kira Rudik, Ukrainian Member of Parliament and Leader of the Holos/Voice Party spoke with the Wilson Center’s Maternal Health Initiative and Middle East Program on the one month anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she emphasized the transformative nature of the conflict for every citizen.

“Putin thought he would be fighting our army,” says Rudik. “Instead, he’s fighting every single man and woman in Ukraine, and there’s a huge difference.”

Resilience and Resistance

In the interview, Rudik says that this tumultuous month has revealed both “good things” and “bad things” for Ukraine. The bad things include the human costs of the war—obvious in the numerous deaths and injuries sustained by Ukrainians, as well as the immense human displacement of its population to safe havens in neighboring countries. And the physical devastation of cities including Mariupol and Kharkiv will take years to rebuild.

“The good thing is that we are still standing,” says Rudik. Despite dire predictions that Ukraine might fall withing 24 to 48 hours, Rudik observes that Ukrainian opposition is holding one of the largest armies in the world at bay. “We are opposing them and they were not able to take any major city.”

An unexpected resilience at all levels of society—and especially from women—has been key to Ukraine’s survival.  “A month ago, we did not expect a lot from ourselves,” notes Rudik, “especially when we heard intelligence saying that we have, like, 48 hours. But many women said, ‘Wait a minute. I have this fantastic opportunity to bear arms. I have this fantastic opportunity—and the privilege, honestly—to do what I think is right. And I’m going to do that.’”

Despite the weeks of speculation—and conflicting evidence—about the possibility of a Russian invasion, Rudik says that the actual event was startling. “You cannot be ready for a war,” she says. “You can try to persuade yourself, but, honestly, nobody’s ever ready unless they are [the ones] attacking.” 

In addition to her successful career in information technology and politics, Rudik is also the co-chair on an animal welfare committee that works to ban fireworks to protect animals as well as veterans who are triggered by such noise. So it is no surprise that she glimpsed the onset of war through that prism.

“At 5 a.m. on a Thursday morning, one month ago,” she recalls, “I heard explosions in the street. And my first thought was, ‘We’ve got to forbid these damn fireworks.’ But it was not fireworks. It was explosions.” 

By 7 a.m., Rudik was at Ukraine’s Parliament, voting to impose martial law. “We were offered rifles to protect ourselves,” she says. “And I thought, ‘Okay, I will take one. I don’t have to make any decisions right now. I will take one and I will see.’”

Rudik observes that the decentralization of Ukrainian resistance has been essential to its success. “Everybody is organized in their own unique way,” she says. “I’m officially a leader of [a] registered resistance group, but since I spend so much time talking to media, the team does a lot on their own. They receive information from the general resistance, but they are also doing a lot of things that are their own initiative.”

Quick decisions also are essential in this conflict. There’s no time for approvals, so people just go and fight the way they think is right, says Rudik. “I have a resistance team of 30 people here. My house is a barracks right now. People are sleeping on the ground. We are training. We have food storage. We are calculating everything, so we can survive a siege.”

Rudik says the greatest present danger is from rocket attacks, which offer “no chance” of survival. “There is absolutely nothing that you can do when the rocket hits a home,” she says. “Believe me, I have been at so many places after a rocket hits. I go as an MP to talk to the people, [and] provide support if they need it.”

Women and Young People

Four million refugees already have left Ukraine, with another 6.5 million people displaced within the country at the time of this interview. Half of all Ukrainian children are currently displaced within Ukraine, or are refugees living outside its borders. While men 18 years and older are not allowed to leave Ukraine at present, women face a choice whether or not to leave. 

“It is our choice,” says Rudik. “And it’s a super privilege that we can have this choice. We can stay and join the army. We can stay and help out with logistics. Or we can move to another country with no issues and no questions asked.”

Rudik says that the conflict and human displacement—especially of Ukraine’s children—is a reflection of the nation’s difficult history and a frustration to its goals after independence in 1991. We had this dream, this goal,” she says. ”When I went to politics, I was thinking [that] our main goal is to make sure that we will [raise] a generation of kids that wouldn’t know what war is, or what hunger is,  or what poverty is… It’s a great idea for a country.”

She wonders now if Russia’s invasion has damaged that vision. “We survived our things,” continues Rudik. “We survived the collapse of the Soviet Union. We survived all this stuff, so let it die with us. But, for the next generation, we will spoil them. We will make them normal. They will be building this brand new country that will be [focused] on the future. A future that will be so fantastic. And right now, after what I have seen, I know that this dream, this idea, it failed.”

Rudik says that children who should have had that better future “have already been traumatized.” Children are hearing the air raid sirens, spending time in bomb shelters, and [getting] on their stomachs each time they hear the sirens. Children are memorizing their blood types, experiencing food and water shortage, and witnessing atrocities. Children are being taught to hold their backpacks with all their identifying paperwork very tightly on the front of their bodies in case of being separated at the borders, she says. “How can this generation ever be normal? There is no way.” 

The failure is painful. “Right now, that generation that I was working on, that the whole country was working on, so they would be normal, will never be,” says Rudik. “Because right now, they’re living somewhere in Poland, somewhere in Western Ukraine, but far away from where they belong. And many of them don’t have a place to return to.”

So what are young people who remain in Ukraine doing? Rudik says that “there are two or three career paths they can take—they become volunteers at the refugee centers, they work on the logistics of the humanitarian aid that is coming in, or they help out on the informational front and the cyber-army. Every time a person tells me their kids want to help, I send them to help with the cyber-army and it has been a great initiative. We have been very successful taking down Russian resources in this way.”

Message to the World

Rudik has firm ideas about what the outside world can do to help her nation survive.

“The main thing everyone can do to support Ukraine is to help make sure that our international partners, like NATO, will help us finish the war,” says Rudik. All the humanitarian aid, financial support, and ideas, won’t sustain Ukraine for long if this leads to a long “bone-breaking” war. “And Russians are not letting the Red Cross in and they’re not letting the humanitarian convoys out,” she adds. The main thing we need is a no-fly zone or help protecting our skies, so we can stop the destruction and actually give Ukrainian people a chance to survive, she says.  

Strengthening sanctions is another way to help. “Talk to everyone you know who is doing business with Russia and have them stop,” says Rudik. “This is most important. We are moving in two directions—to make Ukraine stronger and to make Russia weaker. Every single dollar right now that is going into Russia is obviously spent on killing Ukrainians and creating all the devastation and horror and death and pain.”  

Support to cope with the immense scale of human displacement is also a priority. “We will continue to need support for Ukrainian refugees and Ukrainians who are internally displaced,” observes Rudik. “People right now are starting to realize that this war is not going to finish tomorrow.”

Rudik knows that the personal stakes are high for her as a leader in Ukraine. “We have been warned by our intelligence about Putin’s kill list,” she says. “I know I am on it, but not because I’m woman and because I’m in Kyiv—because I’m a politician and leader of the liberal party.” She adds that she worries more about a rocket attack striking her house. “It’s just like a gamble that you’re doing with the fate, right?”

Yet as she speaks from Kyiv, Rudik acknowledges how important it is for her and other leaders to stay in Ukraine. “It’s also a motivational thing for Ukrainian people that the Members of Parliament didn’t flee,” she says. “They didn’t go away. We are here with our people and we need to advertise that. We need to make sure that people know that. We are here and the Ukrainian Parliament is operating.”

Rudik says that the conflict has also been an opportunity for self-examination. “This is an interesting time for learning a lot about yourself,” she says. “So let’s hope that we are learning good things.”

Read More:

• Ukrainian women and girls are at heightened risk of violence due to war
• Women and girls are contributing to the anti-war effort in Ukraine
• A no-fly zone over Ukraine can save lives and preserve freedom