Ukrainian women training for war can kill Russians with 'office supplies,' resistance group leader s

2023-05-25T19:40:36Z
  • Ukrainian women trained for war can kill Russian soldiers with office supplies, a military leader said.
  • Ukraine Women's Guard founder Olena Biletska told journalist Tim Mak that she's trained more than 60,000 women.
  • Some can kill with nothing but a "pencil or a pen," Biletska said.

Forget guns and grenades — Ukrainian women training for war can kill Russians using just "office supplies," a resistance group leader said. 

Ukraine Women's Guard founder Olena Biletska bragged that some of the women in the resistance group can fight and kill with commonplace items like writing utensils.

"We have women who can kill individuals with office supplies, you know," Biletska said in an interview with war correspondent Tim Mak. "Like a pencil or a pen... it's not just guns or rifles, but the objects available in an office supplies store." 

Biletska founded the Ukraine Women's Guard in 2014 as a way to prepare women for war. Since then, the guard has trained over 60,000 women, Mak reported. 

While much of the guard's classes focus on combat, the students — who Biletska calls "Amazonians," according to Mak — also learn how to provide battlefield medicine, humanitarian support, and intelligence information.

Biletska told Mak she hopes to teach the guard's trainees that they can do anything. 

More than 60,000 Ukrainian women now serve in the country's military, according to US embassy statistics. As of October 2022, around 8,000 women were serving as officers in Ukraine's military, according to Social Europe.

Female soldiers face harrowing challenges in the fight against Russia's invasion.

Ukrainian women on the front lines told The Invisible Battalion Project that they fear sexual violence at the hands of Russian soldiers. The women said they avoid captivity at all costs, choosing to die instead of being captured.

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