Ukraine’s Alina Sarnatska has transformed from volunteer combat medic to prominent playwright. Her writing offers an unfiltered look into the lives of those who volunteer to go to the front – rarest of all, the female experience.
For Alina Sarnatska, the decision to head to the front line to defend her homeland against Russia was “an act of love.”
“My mom is from Kyiv, my grandma is from Kyiv, and my great-grandma is from Kyiv,” she says. “I understood that I had to do something.”
Alina was in the Ukrainian capital helping vulnerable women at an NGO when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. But her profile has radically changed since her days as a development manager with Club Eney, which assists drug addicts, sex workers, and women with disabilities. Four years later, she can add war veteran and playwright to her resume.
Alina, it seems, has lived three lives in one – all of them threaded together by a willingness to shield victims from violence they could not avoid.
“I’m a pacifist,” she explains.
Break From Tradition
Like millions of other Ukrainians, Alina saw her home, the place where she was born and raised, under attack. The images of fellow Ukrainians forced to flee, along with their defenders, are now impressed in the collective consciousness. But Alina’s story comes from a unique perspective – the experience of a woman who volunteered to go to the front.
Even during wartime, Alina explains, the process of enlisting is long and complicated.
When the war started, women who wanted to join the army could mainly only serve as professional combat medics, shuffle papers, or work in a kitchen. When she first volunteered to be a combat medic, Alina was rejected. But she was sure about three things: she was never going to let the Russian forces kill the people she loves, she hated paperwork, and her cooking skills were terrible.
She managed to get in touch with the head of medicine for the Territorial Defense Battalions and, some slightly manipulated papers later, Alina Sarnatska was officially a member of the Ukrainian infantry.
Kyiv established the Territorial Defense Battalions, a volunteer militia, after Russia in 2014 seized control of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and backed separatist forces fighting Kyiv’s ill-prepared forces in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.
The battalions were formally absorbed into the Ukrainian Armed Forces in January 2022, just weeks before Russia’s all-out invasion.
Brigades of the renamed Territorial Defense Forces – now a reserve component of the military – were established in each region, and battalions in every district. As Russian troops advanced on Kyiv in a lightning offensive, people from all working and social backgrounds offered their services to defend Ukraine.
Despite not having a formal medical background, Alina served as a combat medic for two and a half years. And during her time on the front, Alina also grew closer to something not often associated with the army: the theater.
Many fighting for Ukraine never intended to be soldiers. Some in the trenches were peacetime writers, playwrights, or screenwriters, members of what Alina calls a “cultural army.”
After completing her service, she took advantage of the opportunity to absorb their knowledge by taking drama-writing classes offered to war veterans. Soon she was molding her lifelong passion for writing into something much more powerful – a stage for one of the most prominent female voices to document the Ukrainian conflict.
Women Need Weapons
Alina’s plays often center on women: their lives before and during the war, and above all, their everyday lives. It’s well known that women have always had to live up to double standards in a world tailored to men. But what happens when this reality is complicated by nationwide conflict?
Alina’s work portrays women who have lost their partners, their homes, their lifelong friends. They find themselves having to rebuild a sense of normality in a world that does not allow it – on or off the battlefield.
“Why only one child, when’s the second?
Why two kids, how will you feed them?
Why didn’t you save your family?
Why did you endure for so long?
Why did you tattoo your face?
Why are you wrinkled?
Why so old?
Why so young?
Why so fat?
Why so thin?
Why were you born a woman?”
These are the last words of Menstruation, a play about the lives of five women and the constant feeling of being judged during moments that are a normal part of the female experience – such as having their period for the first time or coming to terms with their sexuality. The play is set during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, yet when reading it there are many moments when Alina seems to be communicating a more universal situation than one confined solely to war. Alina’s writing intertwines the past with the future – life on the battlefield is told through her own experiences and those of her compatriots.
“I write about women, because I’m a woman. I’m a feminist,” she says. “I try to keep people paying attention to women’s role, women’s lives.”
She writes about women during the war, emphasizing how they are just as invested in the fight as men.
“Lots of people ask us what a woman in the army needs – like, special ‘female’ needs,” Alina says. “Women in the army need weapons. They need to do their work, to stay alive, just like men.”
‘Empathy Saves Lives’
Alina’s work delves into her past experiences, first as a combat medic, then as a researcher, but always with a singular purpose – to raise awareness of the reality of war. It is something she cannot free from her mind even if she wanted to.
“I cannot think of a world without war,” Alina says. “Because right now the lives of thousands of people depend on my work.”
Alina is intimately aware that those who do not experience something firsthand can easily lose interest, no matter its importance. When it comes to Ukraine, this poses an existential threat. As Alina points out, referring to the outside audience she seeks to reach, “your empathy saves our lives.”
So, it is not enough for her to write. It is not enough to recount the war. In Alina’s words, the horror of the conflict is almost hidden in certain passages, concealed behind scenes of everyday moments.
“Directors from Europe visited Ukraine and they told us that [the reality of the war] was not interesting to them, it was not interesting for Europe. ‘You should write about something interesting, or not so complicated,’ ” she recalls them saying.
“I tried to do that with [Menstruation], I tried to hide a war behind these stories,” Alina says.
Writing is not just an outlet for her. Although she has been secretively passionate about writing since childhood, her decision to step out from behind the curtains to focus on theater originated from other motivations.
When talking about her life before the war, Alina emphasizes that she did not feel that she had anything to say. “I didn’t have enough courage before the full-scale invasion to write because I thought I wasn’t good enough,” she says. “But now Russians try to kill us every day and it’s giving me courage to write.”
That courage has produced numerous plays, five of which are currently running at theaters across Ukraine. Since her first play, Military Mother, premiered in Kyiv in 2024, her works have received critical acclaim both nationally and internationally. She has won three playwriting contests in Ukraine and was one of the winners of the Atypowo documentary-drama festival in Wroclaw, Poland.
Now, as an award-winning playwright, Alina is the one teaching other war veterans how to share their stories with the world. The veterans taking her class aren’t just participating as part of some “social project,” she says, but are seeking a new start in a career where the pen is mightier than the sword.
Alina says the courses allow veterans to choose to be what they want, whether it be a writer or a stand-up comedian. She cannot conceal her own sense of humor, which is as present in her everyday personality as it is in her work. These days, there is often debate over what is or isn’t appropriate to joke about; in the context of the conflict in Ukraine, she argues that humor is necessary.
“I think it’s a part of good art because you cannot write a dark story without humor, otherwise it would be a reportage or an article, but not art,” she says. “If you want to do art, you should do something unexpected, something new, strange, to connect something.”
Everyone on the front line is afraid, Alina says, adding that it’s one of the most dangerous places in the world. Yet, when speaking about herself, Alina doesn’t describe herself as a brave person, nor does she consider her decision to enlist the action of one.
“I don’t think I’m brave,” she says. “You shouldn’t have to be brave to do something.”
Laura Savoini is an editorial intern at Transitions. She is studying for an Erasmus Mundus master’s in journalism.
