Жінки в АТО: «На війні ми знайшли свою гідність»

In “The Veteran’s Hour” project we talk about women at war and female war veterans. 

“I am dreaming so much about an adequate image of a female war veteran in the society and in Ukraine. This does not have to be a woman who’s made a hero, as we all have the right to err. When we are being told that we are heroines, that we came back, we don’t have the right to err any longer, we can’t be ordinary people. I don’t want people to think about us as if we went there in order to get something. We go there same as men do, because of our convictions,” says Anhelina Sereda, a veteran, a tactical medic, a fighter of “Pravy sector” (The Right Sector).

Also, our guest expert is in the Hromadske Radio studio, Andriy Ilchenko, a veteran, fighter of Company-Tactical Group 169, call sign “Vedmid” (Bear).

According to different mass media, almost 14,000 women take part in the war in the East of Ukraine. At the same timewomen in the military are represented in a arguable way in the public discussion. We see stories of “heroes” often, and stories about “heroines” are much rarer to come by. What do men themselves think about this, those who fight in the East of Ukraine shoulder-to-shoulder with women? What’s their opinion of women at war? Journalist Liza Kuzmenko prepared a package about this.

A female soldier, Anhelina Sereda, emphasized in the studio: “Still, I’m coming back to the society as it does play the main role in coming back, in this way or another. There should be not only social adapting groups for male veterans or for veterans’ wives. There should be such groups also for the girls, as there are peculiarities in their coming back. We should not be perceived as heroines but they should also not look at us with pity. We don’t want this very much because we have found our dignity at war and we know our worth now: some inner worth of our values.”