kyiv, Ukraine — Halyna Vynokur, a hardware store employee, was using a firearm for the first time. Iryna Sychova, a department store purchasing manager, disassembled and reassembled the rods and springs of a Kalashnikov rifle.
They were among two dozen women who went to a forest near Kiev on a recent weekend for an urban combat course, training that included shooting rifles, detecting booby traps and throwing hand grenades. They said they were motivated by a sense of duty.
“No one wants to fight in the trenches,” said Olha Bakhmatova, 46, a psychologist who attended the training. But she felt it was “inevitable” that more women would end up fighting and she wanted to be prepared. “I understand: if not me, who?” she said.
After 21 months of full-scale war, fighting in Ukraine has stalled in battles of attrition along a zigzag front line in the southeast. A steady supply of weapons and personnel is crucial, and while Ukraine has weaponry donated by the West, it relies on its own population to replenish its forces — and Russia’s is roughly three times larger.
With so much depending on filling the ranks, efforts are being made to attract more Ukrainian women. About 43,000 women now serve in the Ukrainian military, according to the Defense Ministry, an increase of about 40 percent since 2021, the year before Russia’s full-scale invasion. The male fighting force has more than tripled during the same period.
Women are fighting now in southeastern Ukraine. In several moves since the invasion, the Army has abolished restrictions that barred women from roles such as machine gunner, tank commander and sniper, and removed rules barring women from driving trucks. He raised the age limit for female recruits, previously 40, to 60, the same as for men. Previously, women had taken on combat roles in paramilitary groups or circumventing the rules.
The Ukrainian military’s outreach to women is a step toward equality, but it also reflects the toll the war has taken. The hundreds of thousands of men who wanted to volunteer at the start of the war have already joined; many are dead or injured. The women-only sessions aim to provide a learning environment where women do not feel less informed than men and where their efforts are not compared to male physical strength.
“Women can fight on par with men and at the same time remain feminine,” said Darya Trebukh, founder of the non-governmental group Ukraine Valkiriya, which runs the sessions. “The gender of a warrior makes no difference.”
“Everyone understands that the war will not end in a month. I don’t want to, I never wanted to, but I understand that I have to be prepared to do it,” Vynokur, 26, said about being a member of the Army. He does not recruit women, although he has recently required women with medical training to register for the draft.
The Valkiriya group has trained about 200 women in combat skills. Women who wish to join the Army register at recruiting offices; About one in five taking the training have done so, Trebukh said.
In the forest, a few hours into training, a group of half a dozen women, including Sychova, practiced storming a building. They climbed stairs, crossed hallways, turned corners, covering each other and keeping their weapons trained on potential threats. On an upper floor a man was waiting who acted as the enemy. When the lead group reached him, a woman shouted, “Contact!” The students pretended to shoot. “That’s it, girls,” Sychova shouted down a staircase. “We kill him”.
By: Andrew E. Kramer and Maria Varenikova
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6986112, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-11-15 22:10:07
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