Women in armed forces express anger at stigma and treatment by male colleagues and say complaints are being ignored

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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    On both sides of Dokivska Street and the small park leading to the steps of the Unity church in Kyiv’s western Kotsyubyns’ke suburb, hundreds of men, women and children stood holding roses and carnations.

    The only sound disturbing a recording of the sorrowful male voices in the folk song Plyve Kacha was that of the grief of Eleonora Maltseva’s mother, Iryna, awaiting a coffin in the shade of the maple and oak trees outside the large yellow-brick church.

    Her daughter, known as Elya, a 34-year-old colonel in the Ukrainian army, a talented footballer and a mother to Tymofiy, 14, was one of 12 soldiers killed last week when a Russian jet bombed a five-storey apartment block in which she had been working in the town of Orikhove, in south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region, a staging post for Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

    By her side, Tymofiy, a dark-haired, brown-eyed boy, in his smartest dark blue sleeveless shirt and freshly ironed jeans, appeared impassive, numb.

    There is equality on paper today but scant evidence of it in practice, Haran said, with women’s needs in terms of uniform, body armour, sanitation and career development not treated as priorities and regarded as almost a form of provocation by many men fighting alongside them.

    Doctors in the field are not trained in gynaecology, and when a female soldier’s contract comes to an end they must undergo a medical examination to be re-enlisted in what many suspect is an attempt to ensure they are not pregnant and chasing paid leave.


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