Borscht and Molotovs: How one Ukrainian woman is supporting her country

Yurko said that the events of the last few days had hardened her resolve.

Yurko has three children and they all understand what is going on, she said. She showed off a video of her 5-year-old twin girls singing the national anthem. Yurko said her other child, who is 18, is volunteering with the Territorial Defense Forces, which is the volunteer military unit of the country's armed forces.

"The two most important things a Ukrainian woman needs to know is how to make borscht and Molotovs," she said, referring to homemade petrol bombs commonly known as Molotov cocktails.

Yurko said that she and her friends have made several thousand of the projectiles in recent days, using up 2 tonnes (4,400 pounds) of gasoline.

This story was first published on March 3 as part of CNN's rolling coverage of the war in Ukraine

Written by Pallabi Munsi

For India's third transgender judge -- and the first from the state of Assam -- Swati Bidhan Baruah has spoken openly about the gender dysphoria she had as a child, as well as the alienation and discrimination she experienced.

In 2012, aged 21, without telling her parents, she saved enough money to book a ticket to Mumbai to have gender-confirmation surgery. In 2018, Barauah who studied law at Gauhati University, was appointed a judge in India's Lok Adalat courts.

While Baruah has described her appointment as tokenistic, saying "I am educated. I am in this position, but others don't talk to me [because I am a transgender woman]," she has used her position to fight for 2,000 trans people who were excluded from the National Register of Citizens. She brought a plea before India's Supreme Court which is still pending.

Of the importance of being counted, Baruah said in an interview in a legal aid blog: "Many transgender persons are abandoned or disowned by their families. Neither do they have any connection with their parental homes nor any documentation that can help them establish linkage with their parents or guardians. In such a situation, will they be termed as foreigners? Are they not citizens of India?"