The Ukrainian military is riven with misogyny, according to whistleblowers, with one commander threatening to send the husbands of female soldiers “to their deaths” if they refuse to have sex with him.
Platoon sergeant Nadiya Haran, one of roughly 60,000 women serving in the Ukrainian armed forces, told The Guardian that female soldiers “have to fight two enemies at once” – the Russians and their own sexist comrades.
Haran described how one woman “was put in a psychiatric facility without consent by her commander, just because she applied for transfer to a combat unit,” while another was threatened with similar incarceration “just for reporting that she was being sexually harassed.”
Most concerningly, Haran related that she had to leave her own brigade because an officer “high up the food chain who would harass women,” including subordinates of hers.
“[He] basically told them if they refuse to have sex with him, he’s sending their husbands who were also in the brigade to their deaths,” she said. “I was told to shut up because he did not harass me personally.”
Female soldiers in Ukraine have previously reported how shodddy equipment and a lack of supplies necessary for personal hygiene, such as diapers and urination devices, have left them vulnerable in the field and suffering from “a bouquet of health issues,” particularly “cystitis [and] inflammation of the ovaries and back pain.”
