For 17-year-old Anastasia Dniprovska it’s clear that Ukraine needs to be defended more than ever.
“I have wanted to make myself useful for my country since childhood,” Dniprovska says. Now, the Russia war in east of Ukraine that followed annexation of Crimea, made her feel certain in her decision to “pursue a career in the military.”
Two years ago the young woman became a member of “For the Future,” a Kyiv-based patriotic militant organization. She has since undergone a number of drills and combat trainings. For a teenage girl, she is surprisingly weapon savvy and knows how to use various guns. The organization, Dniprovska said, includes many young women and helps “to take a look at Ukraine’s army from the inside.”
As Kremlin-backed militants started taking over Ukraine’s east, seizing a number of key governmental buildings in Donetsk Oblast and demanding the region to join Russia, Dniprovska said she “couldn’t stay indifferent.”
It turns out that the Russian military invasion on the country’s territory has motivated many Ukrainian women to take up arms.
On April 15 Ukraine’s Interior Ministry started to call-up recruits for the National Guard, the state military unit aimed at defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“We receive nearly 300 calls every day. Up to three percent of the volunteers are women,” National Guard spokesperson Viktoriya Kushnir says, adding that women are engaged mostly in medical service and press offices.
Mykola Malomuzh, the Ukrainian Army General who headed the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine in 2005-2010, is certain that women are very effective military analysts who can predict an enemy’s strategy.
“Women analyze information better than men. The use of a phenomenal combination of intuition and logic makes women more piercing about models of actions of enemies,” Malomuzh says.
The general says that the first women’s battalion trains near Kyiv these days. The unit consists of 350 members that come from all over the country.
“Very soon these brave women will show how talented they are, serving as radio operators, snipers and analysts,” Malomuzh added.
Soon after the partial call-up was initiated by the government on March 17, Ukrainians crowded the recruitment offices of local military commissariats.
Viktoriya Sobchak, a 36-year old nurse from Ternopil, was among those who volunteered.
“Russian aggression in Crimea motivated me and my husband to join the reserve army,” she adds.
Sobchak says her family is very supportive about the decision. Their 11-year-old son will live with his grandparents while his parents serve in army.
Sobchak admits that it would be difficult for her to leave civilian life, her workplace and friends but “it’s impossible to stay home while the enemy tramples your land.”
Anastasia Melnychenko, 29, a journalist and a mother of two says she decided to get basic military training because she wants to be ready “if anything happens.”
A resident of Kyiv, Melnychenko joined the Ukrainian Reserve Army in March. The non-governmental organization gives military training to civilians. She took a four-day training in Kapitanivka village near Kyiv, so now the woman knows how to shoot a SKS carbine and Makarov rifle. She also attended a course on how to survive in occupied territories and took medical classes.
Melnychenko recalls there were many women training with her and they were treated the same as the male volunteers.
“If some so-called masked ‘green men’ lose their Kalashnikov rifles, I will know how to fire with it,” Melnychenko jokes.
However, the woman has little confidence in Ukraine’s army.
“My husband is in the army now. And most people in the army are demoralized. Many of those who really wanted to defend their country were rejected by the recruitment offices. We could have had a very motivated army if all those true patriots were taken in,” Melnychenko says.
Dniprovska also admits the image of Ukrainian army is uncertain now, but still believes that “defending the people of one’s country is the best vocation there is.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected] and Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be reached at [email protected]
