women's world cup squad said she did not consent to being kissed on the lips by its president following last weekend's final. 81 players are refusing to be called up again for spain's women's team until he's removed. yesterday, luis rubiales refused to resign over the row — claiming he was the victim of "false feminism". rail passengers across england face disruption today as 20,000 staff begin a strike over pay and working conditions. workers from m train operators are taking part in the strike, which is its 24th since last summer. four astronauts from four different space agencies are on a spacex rocket en route to the international space station. they'll spend about five days taking over operations from the current team — who have been on the space station since march. now on bbc news... ukraine: women at war.

what does it take to be a female sniper in a modern war? gunshot. what motivates a woman to take up arms? if it will not be for me a target, i will be a target for them. the battle against sexism and propaganda on the frontline... they ask me, am i wife of some commander or am i a cook? ..and the challenges they face on their return. how did you tell your daughter that you were going to the frontline? i didn't tell my daughter about this. we've travelled to ukraine to meet combat women who've become the faces of the war on both sides of the frontline. russian media call them nazis, ukrainian — heroes. these are the real stories of two female snipers and a special unit

sergeant who joined the frontline in ukraine after the russian invasion. my name is andriana. i am a soldier, servicewoman. a female soldier in the special unit of the ukrainian armed forces. russian media says andriana was killed, describing her death in graphic detail... russian newsreader speaks. ..and accusing her of being a ukrainian nazi. we found andriana in ukraine in a hospital. we can't disclose its location for her safety. she's not surprised by the russian news. they published that i am without legs and without hands. yes, and then i was killed by them.

they are professionals in propaganda. andriana, like many other ukrainians, joined a volunteer battalion when russia invaded ukraine back in 2014. she spent a year with the aidar battalion, which, like many of the others, was subsequently subsumed into the official army. cheering, chanting. after the ukrainian army liberated kherson, andriana was injured. her unit did not have an armoured military vehicle and were using a civilian car when they drove over a land mine, providing little protection from the blast. despite her injuries and russian reports, she's preparing to return to the frontline. i am alive and i will protect my country. slava ukraini, heroyam slava.

this is another story, but a very similar one. hundreds of articles in russian label evgeniya as a ukrainian nazi. here she is, describing herself in her own words.

before the full—scale war, evgeniya ran a jewellery business. shejoined the army when russia invaded in 2022. speaking ukrainian.

i was told stories about iryna, a female sniper acting as a commander of an all—male unit... ..in the middle of the counteroffensive. she's agreed to speak to me from the battlefields in donbas... artillery fires. ..but we lost connection. what does it feel to be a woman on the frontline? it's hard. do you remember the first moment when you just arrived? they said, "what are you doing here? you must go in kukhnya."

he speaks ukrainian. gunfire. battling through the stereotypes has been a common experience for all combat women we spoke to. gunfire. they ask me, am i a wife of some commander or am i a cook? because they even don't think about that i can be a soldier. in 2014, i was a seamstress by the documents. in 2022, i'm not a seamstress by the documents and they try also to protect me against others when they saw that some soldiers from other units said something... ..in sexist manner. in the society exist strong opinion | that girls go to serve in the army| to find your husband.

i've come to visit a charity helping ukrainian frontline women. it's run by female volunteers. when a woman go to the army and want ito serve, she can be a combat medic. i it is ok. she can be a psychologist, - even a female sniper, it is ok. but female in command, it's very rare _ that data is based on confidential personal accounts of service women their data is based on confidential personal accounts of service women who share with the volunteers what they are not comfortable discussing with anybody else. that includes abuse they may have suffered — psychological in most cases. we can't even imagine i the scale of this problem because not every soldier, female soldier wants- to talk about this. here is our showroom. sometimes ukrainian female soldiers have to fight for even some basic rights. like to be dressed.

the additional stress ukrainian female fighters have been facing is the uniform and here is why. this is a jacket for ukrainian female soldier. looks quite nice. it's light. it's a summer edition. 0fficial pixel colour. the only problem with it is that, at the moment, it doesn't exist in ukrainian army. and to get one of those, you have to get it from volunteers or to buy it yourself. all other ukrainian female staff has been given male uniform, including underwear. what about the bra? no, they don't get any bra. they don't get any bra. that's quite stressful. yeah, they get the same that men get in the army and men... _ ..don't get bras.

hanna maliar is the deputy defence minister of ukraine, the second woman to hold this position during the war. she explains the female combat uniform is farfrom the biggest problem the army faces, but they're getting there. with the timeframe of soon, vague and unspecified, volunteers have taken it upon themselves to start sewing uniforms for frontline women. at least as much as they can fundraise for. the biggest challenge, they say, is military boots for women of small sizes and bulletproof vests. despite the lack of specialist equipment, women are not shying away from what being on the frontline involves.

suddenly a message arrived from iryna. for her fighting skills, evgeniya earned the nicknamejoan of arc.

she says, despite prejudice against women on the frontline, some believe there are certain combat roles where women perform even better than men.

we've managed to get a connection with iryna. she's got a rare moment of peace on the battlefield. she says establishing her authority took strength and resilience. but once she proved herself on the ground, her female leadership style has helped to keep spirits high. she points out to me, though, that the image of female snipers has been heavily glamorised.

when you are on the frontline

and when you see a target, how do you feel about it? is it a target or a person? it depends on the situation. sometimes it's a person because they are people, but if it will not be for me a target, i will be a target for them. it's like. . . it's enemy. and it's very hard for me to understand that i'm such a person that can't see people when i see a target, but my life during this nine years is about war. iryna is hiding in a vehicle to speak to us in an effort to keep her location secret so as not to become a target herself.

how many injuries did you have? 0h. back. it's...it was hard.

like injuries. i have head injuries. i have broken arm without nerve and without muscles. she speaks ukrainian. andriana has suffered so many injuries after driving over a landmine at the frontline, that it is easy for her to list them for me in ukrainian. but she tries to find some solace in the friendship and support offered by other veterans, or, as she calls them, her sisters and brothers in arms. war, they say, doesn't recognise gender, nor does it spare either sex many of its consequences. some soldiers confided in me that they fear severe injuries more than death.

here is why. we've been allowed to join a special smoking space for the injured soldiers here in the military hospital. a rare moment of peace for those who have been through a lot. one more problem they've been telling me about is the cost of rehabilitation programme. it takes thousands of dollars per each soldier per month and can last for over half a year. and each soldier has to fundraise it themselves. the length and cost of mental rehabilitation has not even been estimated yet. while the total death toll in ukraine varies

depending on the source, the most conservative estimate reaches thousands of lives. andriana's phone book has turned into a list of the dead. how many friends did you lose? now i'm not counting because i've lost more than 100 friends. i even don't know how many phone numbers i need to... ..like, to delete or something like that. in the heart of kyiv here on the independence square, there is a tribute to those who lost their lives in the russian invasion of ukraine. each of these flags has a name on it. how many of those killed on the frontline are female defenders isn't clear. there is no exact statistics and the impact on the women

who survived the frontline is just starting to emerge. how much support they will need long—term and how the government and the society are able to meet those needs remains to be seen. but what is clear right now, what we are seeing today might be just the tip of the iceberg. the exact number of combat casualties cannot be provided due to sensitivities of information during wartime, ukraine's minister of defence told us. but we managed to obtain data suggesting that at least 93 ukrainian servicewomen have been killed in action since the russian invasion. over half a thousand more have been injured. these are findings of the armwomennow charity. the bbc cannot verify them independently. she speaks ukrainian. andriana shows me pictures, which she doesn't want anybody else to see.

photos of her child. the biggest suffering the war has caused to the special unit soldier is the impact it's had on herfamily. she hasn't held her son for over seven months. two days ago, i was talking with him and he said to me that, "mum, remember when we were a family and when we love each other?" so after two years of absence of me and dad, he tried to remember a period when we were a family and we love each other. and i tried to explain him that we now are family and we love each other, but the period is such. she had taken him to safety in february 2022, beforejoining the war�*s frontline.

she wanted to secure him a peaceful future in his native country, not having to risk his life fighting like his parents. they took my best life, i think best years of life when i could be travelling and be happy and build a career and had a dream. they... they even took my dreams because now i don't have them. now they took the childhood of my baby. i'm so sorry about that. no, it's ok. it's not you, it's the russians... ..and only them. evgeniya has an older daughter. she doesn't want to be filmed. just like andriana, evgeniya joined the frontline after taking her child to safety. the war separating

them for three months. and then another three months apart with little connection. evgeniya says she didn't want to upset her daughter, but on her return home, joan of arc suddenly faced another battle for the love of her child. evgeniya says she managed to win her daughter back and even to find love in the middle of the war. but what looks beautiful on screen

came at a high price in reality. evgeniya says she paid for her moments of happiness with increasingly targeted attacks by russian trolls. now she's a wife waiting for her husband to return from the frontline. 18 months on from russia's invasion, there are 60,000 women serving in the nation's armed forces, the ukrainian minister of defence told us. including 5,000 female soldiers on the frontline. andriana is preparing to return to them to continue her fight. we are losing our best people. they are losing not best russians. if i see ukrainian flag in crimea, in donetsk and luhansk, then maybe... ..i will try to think about them, like about people, but not a target.

it's a sentiment shared by iryna. evgeniya named her baby daughter athena after the greek goddess of war and wisdom. she doesn't want to return to the frontline right now, feeling that her currentjob is looking after her newborn. do you want your daughters to join the army when they grow up? no, i don't want. i don't want. my daughter like a princess. saving children from the war

and fighting was the main motivation to join the frontline for all female soldiers who we spoke to. evgeniya adds she hopes this war could be stopped by wisdom. if not by russian men in charge, then perhaps by their women.

hello. i have got a pretty changeable weekend weather—wise for you. yes, there'll be a bit of blue sky and sunshine, but there'll also be some big shower clouds producing those downpours of showery rain both today and tomorrow. could be heavy and frequent at times. i think tomorrow slightly drierfor some of us, compared to what we'll see out there today. but we've got low pressure sitting to the east of the uk — weather front wrapped around that area of low pressure. quite breezy conditions around the edge of that low pressure, so breezy for scotland, northern ireland, through the english channel, for instance, as well. you can see these showers that are peppering up through the course of the day — almost anywhere, really, but i think they'll be most frequent for central and eastern parts of england. and it's here that we're likely to see some thunderstorms. could be some hail, some lightning mixed in. cloudier skies across the northern half of scotland into western parts of northern ireland, as well. temperatures high teens or low 20s. but we are likely to see some of those showers affecting both reading and leeds festivals at times today, but there'll be some late sunshine, i think, for both those areas, as the showers gradually fade away

through the evening hours. 0vernight, many of us dry with clear spells, some mist and some fog patches forming, but we will see further heavy showers rattling in across parts of wales and the south west of england, too, and then perhaps into the west of northern ireland by the early hours of sunday. a bit more cloud and rain spilling in because this weather front is slowly approaching from the west on sunday. for most of us, actually, a bit of a drier morning but, again, those showers will build through the afternoon and it'll be central and eastern england as well as eastern scotland that'll see the most frequent and the heaviest. slightly less numerous than today, i think, those downpours, but you still could catch one almost anywhere. a slight improvement for wales and for scotland, too. and sunday, of course, marks the start of the notting hill carnival, which may be a little bit damp, i think — perhaps some brighter spells at times — but it is into monday that the weather does start to improve. because we've got this area of high pressure in the atlantic that's nudging its way in from the west, so squeezing away the bulk of the showers for monday. it's a bank holiday for many of us — not everywhere — on monday, and we've got some sunshine, particularly for southern and eastern parts of the uk.

a bit more cloud working in from the northwest and there could be the odd spot of showery light rain just working eastwards in the breeze through the day. temperatures around about 16 to 19 in the north, but perhaps up to 20, possibly 21 in the southeast. it should feel relatively pleasant in those spells of sunshine. a drier day for many of us, then, on monday, but the week ahead looking unsettled, pretty showery and rather cool. bye— bye. live from london. this is bbc news. the spanish football federation stands by its boss luis rubiales, saying it'll take legal action over

comments made by the playerjenni hermoso. russian authorities say they've recovered bodies from the site where wagner boss yevgeny prigozhin�*s plane crashed. more disruption to uk rail services expected today, with workers in england walking out over pay and conditions. hello. the spanish football federation has accused the women's world cup winner, jenni hermoso, of lying about a kiss by the federation�*s president. the organisation says it'll take legal action against her, after the forward said she did not consent to being kissed on the lips by luis rubiales, following spain's victory over england in sydney. rubiales has refused to resign, and now more than 80 players have said they'll boycott games until he quits.

0ur reporter sergi forcada is in the newsroom.