According to Hanna Maliar, Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine, there are at least five here. Out of a total of 30,000 women currently in the service.
Female military personnel often work as medics, press officers, cooks, and communications agents or evacuate the dead and treat the wounded. However, many women who choose military specialisations have always been seen as “entirely male” ones. The Economist: the face of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is becoming more feminine.
The British publication talked to women who were in advanced sniper training.
One of them, Sultan, went to serve for the sake of the future of her eight-year-old daughter. “I do all my best to make sure her generation will not have to deal with Putin and his crazy world,” Sultan explains her choice.
Lightweight, deft, able to retreat silently. And also – “more patient” and less likely to take unjustified risks than men are. This is how their instructor – the commander codenamed “Deputy” – described female snipers to the British publication The Economist.
He admits that, at first, he was pretty sceptical about training female snipers. But he changed his mind when he saw how the female military coped with the back-breaking survival test, the so-called “physic”. Only five candidates out of 90 ones (men and women) stayed. Three out of those five were women.
The snipers with whom The Economist spoke to claim that they experience prejudice at every stage of their journey. But every time, they prove their abilities by completing the tasks assigned.
More information about female defenders' activities is available at the link.
