Meet the Ukrainian Sniper They Call ‘Joan of Arc’
Evgeniya Emerald’s dad wanted a boy.
When a girl was born, he resolved to make her fiercely independent, self-reliant, and, whether he intended to or not, dangerous.
At age nine she received her first gun and when her father took her out on her inaugural hunt that same year, she hit five targets with five rounds.
Today, Emerald has become an iconic figure in Ukraine. She is a symbol of how women are part of military efforts to expel the Russian invaders.
“Nearly 60,000 women currently serve in the army,” Ukraine’s defense minister Oleksii Reznikov said during the Ukrainian Women’s Congress last November, “of whom 5,000 are directly involved in hostilities.”
The wife of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Olena Zelenska, noted that women made up more than a fifth of the entire personnel of the armed forces of Ukraine.
Before the war, Emerald ran a successful jewelry-making business and was an influencer in her own right.
After the Russian invasion in February of 2022, Emerald received a call from an old friend and military officer in the…
