“We really wanted to help and to replace those men who went to fight and to protect Ukraine,” Nadiya Moskalenko told NBC News.
By Richard Engel and Gabe Joselow
PAVLOHRAD, Ukraine — They are Ukraine’s “Rosie the Riveters,” rolling up their sleeves and doing a dirty job once considered suitable only for men.
But unlike their American equivalents in World War II, they’re not working in defense-industry factories. Instead they’re going 900 feet underground, helping to dig coal and keep the power on, replacing the men who left to fight Russia. Now they’re hopeful that President Donald Trump can secure a ceasefire deal and bring an end to the war, which entered its fourth year in February.
“We really wanted to help and to replace those men who went to fight and to protect Ukraine,” Nadiya Moskalenko told NBC News on Thursday.
The 48-year-old grandmother said two of her sons had volunteered to fight Russia, and a few months after President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion in February 2022, she signed up to go down the 50-year-old mine on the outskirts of the city of Pavlohrad in eastern Ukraine.
Before the war started, the government barred women from doing jobs underground because it considered the work too physically demanding. But after many male miners joined the military early in the war and others were later conscripted, the Soviet-era policy was scrapped.
Moskalenko, who wears lipstick and eyeliner to work, operates the cable cars that move workers and supplies across the mine’s vast 75-mile tunnel network. (continued)