35 days at the front — then back to Borodyanka, in a coffin
Tetiana Kosian signed a contract on February 26 and was killed on March 23 while saving the wounded. Her death is a single line in the statistics, but behind it is the choice of a woman who went to war voluntarily.
By Tetiana Suchkova-Ladik
March 29, 2026 · 1 min read
Borodyanka has already buried its own — in 2022 the town became a symbol of Russian atrocities. Now it is burying those who went to fight afterward.
On March 30 in Borodyanka they are saying farewell to Tetyana Kosyan — a sanitary instructor at the medical post of a mechanized battalion. She was 35 years old.
She signed her contract on February 26, 2025. She was killed on March 23 during a combat mission — 25 days before this farewell. Between the contract and death — less than a month.
A sanitary instructor is the person who carries the wounded out under fire. Not “somewhere in the rear,” not “in support.” It is work under bullets, with someone else’s blood on your hands, with another’s pain as the only compass. The Borodyanka settlement council wrote the standard line: “courageously fulfilled her duty, saving the lives of her comrades-in-arms.” Behind that formulation is a concrete physical action in a specific second that cost her life.
At 11:30 in Borodyanka a living corridor will form from the “Kruh” quarter to Tsentralna, 237. At 12:00 — the funeral service. She will be buried in the old cemetery.
Kosyan came voluntarily — not through mobilization, but under contract. This is important because it means: she chose. And she chose medicine under fire instead of civilian life.
How many such women — under contract, with a medical bag, assigned to a specific battalion — are now doing the same work she did until March 23? The Ukrainian army does not publish complete data on women medics in combat units. But every new Borodyanka reminds us: this statistic is not an abstraction.
The question that remains after every such obituary: when will the state finally begin to publicly count women in combat roles — not as an exception, but as a systemic part of the army, with appropriate social protection and recognition?
