Viktoria Kucheriava, 31, carefully steps along piles of pans, graters and assorted utensils, blackened with soot. This is all that is left after an airstrike hit a large kitchenware warehouse, located on the outskirts of Kyiv. The walls and roof are twisted and grey from dust after a massive fire tore through the building.
Viktoria was one of dozens of firefighters who rushed to the scene, but the fire engines were stopped as missiles were still landing. When they got to the site, the risk of unexploded ammunition meant the team couldn’t enter the building.
“We made every effort to prevent the fire from getting to the administrative building adjacent to the storage facility,” Viktoria said. “Then the attacks resumed, and we had to retreat from the area.”
Viktoria is one of few women firefighters in Ukraine, and the only one in the Kyiv region. She said positive thinking helps her and her colleagues to face the daily demands of their risky job.
“It doesn’t matter where you work now. With the current situation in Ukraine, there’s a risk everywhere,” she said.
As of July, at least 41 Ukrainian rescue workers, including firefighters, have been killed, and 134 have been injured since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service (SES).
For Viktoria, the scariest time came on the first day of the Russian invasion, when she received an emergency call at 5 a.m. to arrive at her fire station located in the town of Vyshneve west of Kyiv.
“Our chief told us: a war has started.”
For the next two and a half months, Viktoria and her colleagues stayed at their workplace day and night, often sleeping in a bomb shelter. A former chef, Viktoria began cooking for her colleagues during this time.
Before becoming a firefighter, Viktoria worked as a chef for 11 years. She learned cooking from her mother who also was a chef, and then at a college in Zaporizhzhia, now an embattled city in south-eastern Ukraine. But even as a child, she had dreamed of becoming a soldier.
At first, she applied to join the National Guard and was assigned to cooking for the officers’ canteen. “It was not what I wanted,” she said, explaining why she left the National Guard and called the nearest fire station, asking whether she could apply for a job there.
“When I came for an interview, they told me it would be hard. I answered: it’s ok, I’m ready,” she remembers.
Serhiy Bortnik, who heads the fire station, said that women used to be employed there only as dispatchers, but times have changed. In late 2017 the Ukrainian government removed prohibitions on jobs for women, which included firefighting.
“Viktoria has proven that she’s able to do this job,” he said.
The job of firefighter is demanding and physical. An oxygen tank weighs 15 kilograms and a firefighter’s boots weigh 1.5 kilograms each. In mid-April, wearing all this gear, Viktoria climbed through the window of a factory that was on fire after it had been hit by missiles. The missiles hit at night and were so close to her fire station that the shock wave smashed the windows. Viktoria and her colleagues fought for more than eight hours to extinguish the fire.
Despite the hardship of the work, there is no shortage of people wanting to join the emergency services. Three more recruits are currently training to join the fire station where Viktoria works, and her husband is also a firefighter at the same fire station.
Viktoria says the only thing she dreams of now is peace for Ukraine. But in the meantime, she is keen to help and make a difference. “I've made a good job choice. These days firefighters are in great demand.”
© 2026 United Nations Development Programme
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