"Man's power usually gets lost under force majeure circumstances," says Nadiya Savchenko, senior lieutenant of Ukrainian army, captured by Kremlin-backed separatists in Ukraine's eastern region on June 17.
Aydar, 400-member unit of Ukrainian army that Savchenko served in, attacked the insurgent positions near the city of Luhansk and lost the battle.
Separatists interrogated her, having a hope that a woman will more likely reveal information regarding the positions of Ukraine’s military forces. But they were wrong.
“I gave an oath to the Ukrainian people,” was her answer.
Those words are easy to say during the military parade or over a beer with a co-servant, but not during the aggressive questioning while your hand is chained to some pipe and you have to make bets on your chances to survive.
“Wow, an A for shooting! And an A for parachuting too!” said the surprised separatist soldier looking at Savchenko’s personal file while conducting the interrogation. No wonder the separatists demanded the release of four insurgents in exchange for such a qualified officer.
“They won’t let me go, they’ll kill me. It will be your Russian authorities who will kill me by the accusations that are being made against me,” Savchenko told the journalists of Moscow-based Komsomolskaya Pravda, one of the most popular newspapers of Soviet era, who were allowed to interview her.
“Happy is the person who dies while doing the job he or she likes,” she said in an interview with a minor military television station in 2011. “When a surfer gets covered by the wave, when a paratrooper can’t open the parachute. Maybe, it’s scary, but there are people who dream to die this way. I think, I’m one of them.”
She could really become a feminist icon for the decisions she makes and the life she lives. Three times Savchenko, now 33, applied to Kharkiv Air Force University – in order to let her dream of piloting a real military plane come true – and three times was rejected.
Women are not welcomed in the army, she was told. However, Savchenko was not an ordinary Ukrainian woman by the time she applied in 2005. Having served for six months in Iraq with a unit of Ukrainian peacekeepers, she was nothing like a naive high school graduate with some JROTC-type experience.
Ukraine lost 18 servicemen during that mission. Savchenko’s mother, who had to provide an official permission for her daughter to go to Iraq, had all the chances to find Nadiya’s name on the list of dead, when seven Ukrainians died on January 9, 2005, trying to defuse the bomb. “I was walking among the corpses, drinking my juice and trying to identify the dead,” recalls the woman who is being actively compared to Demi Moore’s Jordan O’Neil by the local media.
Back in Iraq, Essaouira Prince offered as much as $50,000 for her to become one of his wives. But she refused. Having a family is not part of her life plan.
After Savchenko personally petitioned Ukraine’s then-Defense Minister Anatoliy Grytsenko, she was allowed to enter the Kharkiv Air Force University. Two times she was expelled – it had nothing to do with her grades – and both times renewed the student status. “Operating navigator of Su-24 attack aircraft,” reads her university diploma.
Military helicopter Mi-24 is another key point of her resume. However, she’s always been dreaming about piloting the aircraft and not just navigating, but was never allowed to. Hopefully, Ukrainian Air Force commanders will finally grant Nadiya Savchenko such a right after she comes back from the place which may teach things that no military school can.
Kyiv Post associate business editor Ivan Verstyuk can be reached at [email protected].
