How Ukrainian Women Sustain Society Under War: Elena Sabry on Resilience, Work, and Dignity

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/02/19

Elena Sabry is a Ukrainian-American executive career coach at Career Academy, based in Las Vegas. With family in Kyiv and constant contact with friends and colleagues in Ukraine, she follows the war’s daily realities through Ukrainian news, social media, and direct conversations. Sabry previously worked in Kyiv’s hospitality industry, including at the InterContinental Kyiv, and has lived abroad in the United Arab Emirates, sharpening her perspective on language, culture, and migration. Shaped by early economic hardship after her father died in 1992, she now helps clients build resilient careers and supports Ukrainian communities through advocacy, practical guidance, and storytelling during prolonged crises.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Elena Sabry, a Ukrainian-American executive career coach in Las Vegas with close family ties to Kyiv, about how the war is reshaping Ukrainian society. Sabry describes how women sustain daily life and the wartime economy through paid work, volunteering, and extensive unpaid care. She argues that Russia’s strikes were aimed at exhausting morale and forcing displacement, intensifying uncertainty and long-term psychological strain. Across generations—teen girls to “babushkas”—grief, fear, and accelerated aging coexist with stubborn resilience. Sabry rejects “fatigue” narratives, framing Ukraine’s defence as a human-rights and European security imperative.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Where small villages are being drained, this reiterates what was mentioned in the first interview.

There are several contexts here. There are a few categories of men based on their behaviour in response to the war, either immediately or over time. One group has left the country. A second has remained within the country but acted surreptitiously. A third has been sent to the front line against their will. A fourth consists of those who volunteer for the front line. Among those at the front line, some are injured, some are killed, and some continue fighting.

These are the main categories of men in general terms. There are interesting sources on this, particularly regarding gender. Another important story for this interview is the absence or significant reduction of men and how that alters the way Ukrainian society was structured before the war—how it affects employment in certain areas and changes social dynamics.

What has been the changing role of women since the start of the war in 2014 and then the full-scale invasion in 2022? Has the scale of the invasion changed the extent to which women’s overall roles have shifted within Ukrainian society?

Elena Sabry: Many women serve, and many women work. As we discussed before, they are doing these jobs and will continue to work. Many do not leave the country for various reasons, and they stay.

I sent you material about Gurulyov, a deputy of the Russian State Duma, who publicly discussed strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure around October 2022, including on propagandist programs such as Evening with Solovyov and on his official Telegram channel.

Russia began large-scale strikes targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in October 2022, and these attacks have been widely documented. From my perspective, this appears planned and aimed at psychological and emotional impact—breaking Ukrainians’ will and pushing people to flee. This is my assessment.

Jacobsen: Are women responding to this brutality differently than men in general?

Sabry: It depends. Women respond differently depending on their circumstances. If a husband is killed and there are children, the grief is immense. A family has been destroyed.

Women are mothers. We take care of households and families. We give birth. Women do not start wars; men start wars. Wives and widows do not want this. We want peace. We want the war to stop.

But at what price is that peace demanded? Submission. The surrender of our territories—the land, houses, and graves where our grandparents were born, where our parents live, and where our friends live. Where would these people go?

People in occupied territories, including Crimea, are Ukrainians. Many have been pressured to take Russian passports and are waiting for the Ukrainian army to liberate them. They have not given up. They believe this land will not belong to Russian occupiers.

In general, women speak more clearly and forcefully. They are more active on social media. But everyone in Ukraine wants peace—at a just price. Future generations will ask: What did you do during the war? Where were you? What was your position?

This is a very complex issue, but at the very least, we want a ceasefire and for people to be left with dignity—to have fresh water and electricity. Without these basics, people cannot even charge a phone.

Women are working now. They either continue living in Ukraine or work extensively as volunteers. There are millions of volunteers. Almost everyone supports volunteer efforts. Many people become volunteers themselves, work to stop the war, work in foundations with international donors, help directly, or donate every day.

What we do not want is for Ukraine to be used as a bargaining chip among major powers. Ukraine deserves to live in peace. It is a human right to live in the home where you were born and raised. That is often the only thing people truly have. No one can replace it, and no amount of money can buy your land, your motherland, your homeland.

People do not want to be immigrants. They do not want to be refugees. Many left and then returned. They came back to continue working, to support their husbands and families, and to contribute.

You will speak with many women in Kyiv who are involved in relief efforts. You will hear from people across different generations and with other political views. But in general, the mood among Ukrainians is one of resilience. My relatives show me this strength. They tell me, “We do not want you to lose sleep. Continue doing what you are doing. I appreciate your support. We are holding on.”

Jacobsen: What is the most challenging experience for women during the war?

Sabry: The hardest part is not knowing what the future holds. When people have no sense of what comes next, everything changes. Remember the COVID period, when people around the world were confined to their homes. I was in California at the time. People were shocked that they could not leave their homes. I stayed there for several years. It was tough. Even my mother came to stay with me for a time.

Eventually, we moved to Las Vegas, but it was still hard. A new reality sets in, and you do not know what your life will look like. Even while attending college, I found myself questioning the value of the courses I was taking—your value system changes.

There is a clear divide in Ukrainian life: before the war and after. It does not matter where Ukrainians live. Even if someone left Ukraine decades ago and now lives in Canada or the United States, if their family is still there, the pain remains.

Every day I think about what I can do for my family and how I can support them. I ask myself how I can encourage Ukrainians, because they do not deserve to live through freezing nights, darkness, and cold without electricity. People begin to lose hope.

There is a tendency to say that Ukrainians are brave and strong, and they are, but they are also human. They are not inexhaustible. If Ukraine were to fall and Putin’s army moved further west, what would happen to Europe? What would happen to the world?

This uncertainty makes life impossible to plan. I travel. I have my husband. I have family. I visited my sister and niece in Toronto. But I could not see my mother for a year. I cannot go to Kyiv as I used to.

When I visited in 2022 and 2023, and even last year, missile and drone attacks were not as intense as they are now. Today, when I speak with my mother, I hear the sounds of drones and air-defence systems. This kind of warfare—supersonic, constant, mechanical—is unbearable. Neither humans nor animals can endure it.

It is an enormous psychological and emotional burden.

It is tough. Nearly every Ukrainian I know on Facebook—and I have seven, eight, maybe nine thousand followers there, and a similar number on LinkedIn—needs a therapist or psychologist. Mental health care is expensive and is not covered by insurance. People pay out of pocket.

They need to earn and save money while still donating. They need to support their families, bring water home, and invest in costly batteries. These are additional expenses. They need clothes, food, and on top of that, they face serious health issues. Some people have died from panic attacks.

My mother experienced this directly. When she came to California, any loud sound or helicopter triggered panic. She would hide, terrified. I witnessed it. These are the conditions people are living under.

I am not even talking about people on the front line. I do not know how they endure it. Perhaps some become numb to the fear, but for civilians—people who work, who try to live everyday lives—it is tough to withstand.

I wrote a book and planned to do presentations, attend book fairs, and build projects. I found work and began coaching people one-on-one. I started doing training because I was overwhelmed. I was constantly watching Telegram, YouTube, and the news—every day, following social media to see what was happening on the front line, who was saying what, and what political leaders were saying.

After a year, I decided I needed stability. I took a full-time job and worked for two years. I continued coaching. I accepted low-paying work to remain in my industry. I put my business on hold—postponed launching another book and paused my projects.

Planning becomes short-term. Memory and focus shrink. Friends invite you into projects, and you jump in, often returning to things you did years ago. You lose consistency and strategic planning. Americans are different in this respect. They believe that with the right plan, leadership, and funding, success is achievable and that a positive outcome is likely.

In Ukraine, it is different. We grew up with instability. I remember the 1998 financial default. I am part of Generation X—the sandwich generation—with aging parents and ongoing work responsibilities, and sometimes children as well.

Jacobsen: The main idea is that it is tough to plan, easy to become distracted, and emotionally complex—especially because you cannot visit Kyiv.

Sabry: I see Kyiv in my dreams. Even though I have lived in the United States for more than eight years, have a family here, own a house, and am an American citizen, my heart is with those people—standing in the snow.

I speak with my mother and sister every day. Sometimes my mother jokes that she talks to me more than to my sister. I keep asking myself what more I can do.

I write to senators. I support volunteers. But it does not feel like enough. It is not enough, given Ukraine’s size and the number of people affected. These are human beings. They are dying. They cannot fight forever.

I do not understand the rhetoric that asks why Ukraine should be supported. The source of this problem is Putin. The world has intelligence services and resources. I do not understand why this continues.

They do not know how to stop him. Why is it acceptable to treat the world as if “today we take over Ukraine, tomorrow we take Greenland, someone else moves on Taiwan”? What is happening? This is not right.

I do not want Ukraine to be forgotten. I do not like it when people say, “We are tired.” We need to identify the source and confront what I see as the core of the problem—an imperial system that built a military-industrial complex over decades.

When my parents lived in the Soviet Union, Ukraine was part of it. My father was a Red Army officer and a doctor. We served in different parts of the Soviet space. My mother worked in a military factory. I saw how extensive the military manufacturing system was—factories everywhere.

Western powers have weapons and intelligence capabilities. They have the capacity to address the source of this aggression more decisively.

I understand that Western countries carry their own burdens. They also need to invest in roads and schools. But enough is not being done to punish Russia.

There is a Russian State Duma deputy—Gurulyov—who, in 2022, spoke multiple times on Russian television about striking Ukrainian infrastructure. Russian propaganda amplifies these messages, shapes public opinion, and normalizes the idea of cutting Ukrainians off from electricity and heat—especially in winter. Ukrainians are still surviving, but I do not think Western leaders are doing enough.

This is not “Biden’s war.” It is not “Zelenskyy’s war.” The war began with Russia’s seizure of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

I have two friends—executives—who fled. One is from Donetsk and one from Stakhanov. They brought their families to Kyiv and bought apartments. In 2022, they fled abroad again. They lost property. The world should not have accepted earlier territorial seizures as usual, with people applauding strongman leadership.

You cannot give anyone the power to annex territories—especially when the people of that country made their choice. In the 1991 referendum, Ukrainians voted to leave the Soviet Union. We did not want to remain in that system.

What I respect about Ukrainians is their unity on this: they do not want to submit, lay down arms, or “give up half of Ukraine” for a ceasefire.

I watched the buildup closely from October 2021. In 2022, I saw coverage on Fox News and followed developments. I called my sister and asked whether she wanted to send my nephew away. At the time, many people believed there would not be a war. Now Ukrainians have learned that they can rely only on themselves. We are grateful to everyone who supports us and to everyone who speaks up, but we learned the hard way that we need a strong army and a functioning economy. We need to work. We do not wait for anyone.

At the same time, there are limits to what we can do alone—intelligence, advanced missiles, air defences. I do not understand why some operations elsewhere are described as being resolved in hours, while Ukraine has faced years of war. I cannot accept that it cannot be stopped.

I do not want to believe that the combined power of the United States and other Western nations—with their weapons and influence—cannot bring this to an end. In my view, the solution has to go deeper than humanitarian aid or generators. It has to target the source—Putin and the Russian state’s capacity to wage this war.

If they bomb our power stations, my view is that Ukraine should be allowed to respond effectively, including with long-range capabilities. People keep warning about nuclear escalation. I do not believe Russia’s atomic threats should paralyze policy. Western powers also have nuclear deterrence, and they know how to communicate with Putin. Putin is the problem.

Do not point the finger at Ukraine. In any war, blaming the victim is wrong. I say this as a historian as well. My first degree was in history, and I have a master’s degree in history from Ukraine.

I remember my grandparents telling me about the Second World War. Both of my grandfathers were wounded and later died relatively young, around sixty. One was injured in Budapest and was shot in the lung. Another was a prisoner of war. They told me how larger nations made decisions while smaller nations suffered the consequences.

Ukraine is a small country. Unfortunately, it could not be neutral like Switzerland. With a neighbour like Russia, neutrality is not possible. You need weapons. You need alliances. Ukraine should be part of NATO and the European Union. Ukraine is Europe.

I have brought foreign friends to visit Ukraine, and they say the same thing. The Carpathian Mountains resemble Switzerland. The landscape, the culture—it is Europe, even if people do not always speak English.

We need to be stronger and speak clearly. This war must be stopped. The aggression must end, and the aggressor must be punished. That is all. I am talking too much.

Jacobsen: What about the very young and the very old—girls and babushkas? How are they coping with the loss of male loved ones and the circumstances that force girls to mature faster, while older women see people they raised or mentored die before them?

Sabry: All generations of women are aging differently under this pressure. I look at my mother. When she was in California, we went to a stylist who coloured her hair. In Ukraine, women often do not do that. They are proud of their gray or silver hair.

I know families whose sons have died. For them, the grief is overwhelming. This generation—those born after the Second World War—remember the Stalin years. They remember the fear. My grandmother used to talk about it.

She was taken as a forced labourer to Austria during the German occupation. When the Germans occupied Ukraine for several years, they took teenagers from factories and farms. Fifteen-year-olds were transported by train, together with animals, on journeys that lasted weeks. She tried to escape. She was caught and warned that if she tried again, she would be sent to a concentration camp.

The camps were not only for Jews. Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, and others who resisted or were accused of opposition were also imprisoned.

I spent my summers with my grandmother in the 1990s, after school, at her small farm about seventy or eighty kilometres from Kyiv. There was no running water. We carried water and heated it to wash clothes. Life there was not as modern as in the city.

Every night, she told us stories about her experiences during the war. My grandmother, my mother—who is now seventy-seven—and her friends in their seventies still remember these stories vividly. They live with those memories, and now they are watching history repeat itself.

This is a postwar generation shaped by the Soviet period, which cultivated a cult around the Second World War—something Putin now exploits in propaganda, framing Russia as a defender against imagined threats from the West. People remember these stories deeply. My grandmother remembered stories from her own grandparents, who were farmers before the Soviet system arrived.

When Stalin and the Soviet authorities imposed collectivization, farmers who resisted were labelled enemies and sent to Siberia or the Far East. Later, when my family served in the Russian army in the Far East, my mother was shocked by how many people there spoke Ukrainian. This was the result of forced relocations, including Crimean ethnic groups and Ukrainians.

This generation carries that memory. My grandmother often said—and my father was only two or three years old during the Second World War—that war is the hardest thing a human being can endure. I remember family dinners where the first toast was always the same: you can survive almost anything in life, but war is the hardest.

That memory is alive now. When people lose loved ones—sons, husbands, family members—you see it immediately. I visit relatives on Facebook or FaceTime, and sometimes I barely recognize them. Their hair has turned gray. They are aging rapidly because they are living under constant stress and fear.

Imagine waking up every day to news alerts: rocket attacks on Odesa, civilians killed, children among them. You ask yourself a simple question: Am I next? You go to bed with that thought. My sister tells me about nights filled with explosions. She hugs her husband and thinks, “Not here. Not now.” That is daily life.

This is especially hard for the middle-aged generation—the so-called sandwich generation—who support both elderly parents and younger children. There are no senior homes in Ukraine as they exist elsewhere. Families take care of their parents themselves, or they pay privately for help. There is no broad state-supported system like in California.

These people work, support aging parents, and have children in their twenties who are studying or starting careers. They live in constant uncertainty.

For the younger generation, childhood was taken away. Teenagers—fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old—were forced to grow up overnight when the full-scale war began in 2022. I see this through my nephew. He graduated from the Economic University in Kyiv and now works at a five-star hotel. Within a few years, he became a department supervisor.

He started working while still a student. He dates; his friends travel, sometimes to Odesa, and we remind them to be careful about curfews, checkpoints, and mobilization rules. Draft notices are in effect, and people must carry documents. He is still below the primary mobilization age, but the awareness is always there.

Despite this, life continues. He writes to me on his birthday and says, “Life goes on.” People get married. Children are born. My sister sometimes looks at a newborn and thinks about how to bathe a baby during blackouts or air-raid alarms—questions no parent should have to ask.

Imagine trying to bathe a baby, change diapers, or wash clothes without water or electricity. Imagine ice, snow, and still needing to take a child to the doctor to be weighed. This is daily life for many families.

Ukraine was also hit very hard by COVID. People remember that period clearly. I do not know how it was in Canada, but in California, it was tough. People stayed under shelter-in-place orders. At first, there was real fear. We used gloves and masks. People died in hospitals. In the United States, especially among seniors, the impact was severe. Ukraine also has a large elderly population, similar to Italy. My mother was afraid to go outside. It lasted for almost two years. People were exhausted. They hoped that by 2022, life would finally resume.

People also remember the period just before the invasion. During the Olympic Games, world leaders were present. There were reports that diplomatic appeals were made to delay military action during the Olympics, in line with the Games’ long-standing tradition. Whether symbolic or not, people later felt that everything had been planned.

Before the war, Ukrainians travelled frequently. Many took vacations to Turkey or Egypt. Flights were short and affordable. Travel packages were standard. My husband often asked why my sister did not visit us in the United States. The reason was simple: transatlantic flights were far more expensive.

People had stable lives. Many Ukrainians had mortgages, cars, summer houses, and businesses. Those working for international companies often travel. This was a functioning middle-class society.

When Ukrainians relocated, mainly to Poland, they contributed significantly to the economy. A large share of this contribution came from women. Poland, Germany, and other countries implemented integration programs that helped people work and rebuild their lives. Distance made this more difficult in the United States, where it can be harder to explain what Ukraine is and why it matters.

That is why your work, Scott, matters—helping North Americans understand why Ukraine needs support. Even young professionals in the Bay Area, including those working at major technology firms, sometimes ask why Ukraine should be helped. Ukraine’s problem was that while people were busy resisting aggression, they did not have the space to explain its broader importance.

If Ukraine falls, the following targets are the Baltic states and Poland. That is why those countries opened their homes and hearts. The scale of this response has been extraordinary.

Who is sustaining the economy now? Women. Around sixty percent of the workforce in key sectors consists of women. Women increasingly hold senior government positions and leadership roles in NGOs and volunteer organizations. Volunteers are overwhelmingly women.

Stereotypes are changing. Outdated images do not define Ukraine. It is a strong economic partner. After the war ends, with support from countries such as Japan and others already helping, there is potential for joint ventures and reconstruction. Ukraine has a workforce, a significant diaspora, and entrepreneurial experience.

Ukraine can be rebuilt—stronger than before. Ukrainians are deeply committed to work. As a career coach, I work with people from their teens to their sixties who keep working. They help. They stay active.

Ukrainian women also carry a second, unpaid job at home—cleaning, cooking, raising children. This labour is constant and essential. It is women who have this burden.

Jacobsen: Many conventions and frameworks are coming out of the United Nations that address unpaid or undervalued labour. Across countries, even those that score relatively high on gender-equality indices, women still perform the majority of this necessary labour.

Sabry: Yes. Women often face career gaps when they stay home with children. At the same time, there is now a trend toward hiring people over fifty, because they tend to be loyal and less likely to leave an employer for a slightly higher salary. In Ukraine, these workers are hired.

There is no shortage of jobs. You walk down the street and see signs looking for cashiers or staff. Every day on Facebook, I see posts asking for workers. I am part of many Facebook groups, and Ukrainians work. Ukrainian women work.

This is part of our culture. In some cultures where I have lived, including parts of the Middle East, many women stay at home after marriage and focus on raising children. In Ukraine, women work. My sister earns more than her husband. She works, then comes home, cleans, cooks, raises a child, and takes care of elderly parents.

Women carry responsibilities similar to men, and this has long been the case. During the First World War, fighting took place on Ukrainian territory. My great-grandfather served in the Russian Empire and was drafted. During the Second World War, both of my grandparents lived under the Soviet Union. Ukrainians, Georgians, Belarusians, and many others fought and suffered. The war was not fought only by Russians or Americans.

As historians now know from open archives, Ukraine suffered enormous losses. Millions of Ukrainians were killed. Stalin was unprepared for the scale of the war. My grandfather was sent to the front with equipment from different sources, was surrounded near Kyiv, and quickly became a prisoner of war. My grandmother was taken as a forced labourer to work in Austria.

Everyone worked. Ukrainians are hard workers.

I reject the idea that this is only about humanitarian aid. Ukraine is defending Europe from an aggressive imperial system. If Ukraine had been part of NATO or the European Union, this war would likely not have happened. Appeasing aggressors does not work.

If someone breaks into your home and attacks you, you do not negotiate. You defend yourself. This is what I want people in Washington to understand.

I am far away. I am one person, a career coach living in Las Vegas, with family in Kyiv. But you have a voice. You can tell these stories. Many stories need to be told. I hope there will be more books and films about Ukraine—not only about past tragedies, but about the heroism of women, men, and young people who work and endure every day.

Ukraine is operating with roughly half of its economy under wartime conditions. The people who remain, who do not flee, are heroes. Many executives and managers could work in Poland, the Middle East, the United States, or Canada. Instead, they stayed or returned. They say, “If not us, then who?”

Otherwise, Russian tanks would enter Kyiv, seize homes, displace families, and force people to live under occupation. That is unacceptable.

Leadership must not come from a single country. Europe and a broader coalition may need to act decisively together. I listen to global leaders and hear claims about what satellites can see, and I ask why the movement of Russian forces and leadership is treated as unknowable.

I wish I could do more. I wanted to work in government service, even in intelligence, but age limits apply. I am now a citizen and want to contribute. I speak Russian. I understand how Russian propaganda works and how people are influenced by it. Ukrainians can do more than volunteer alone. We have voices. We have stories.

You will meet my sister, my mother, and ordinary people. And you will meet many more like them.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Elena. 

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