Instructor Yary spoke about female snipers in the Northern Military District zone

The MK correspondent talked with an instructor with the call sign “Yary”, who trains snipers, and found out what requirements are imposed on female snipers, how much time it takes to train them, and also in what ways our girls are superior to mercenaries fighting on the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

According to “Yary”, female snipers in the Northern Military District zone are not a common occurrence. The reason is simple – there is a directive not to send female military personnel to these specialties. Girl snipers can only be found in volunteer units, where they are enrolled solely on their personal initiative and with the permission of their commanders. But in 2014, there were many representatives of this rare profession in the Donbass, although, as my interlocutor notes, not all of them were distinguished by their professionalism.

“I may say things that are unpleasant for some, but the situation was such that many women did not join the militia because they had a good life,” he says. – Someone’s husband was killed, or he ran away, and she was left alone with the children, she had to survive somehow. Here we go. Some settled down more or less normally, gained sympathy from some commander, he enrolled her in the detachment, gave her a rifle, and everything seemed to be settled. Although in fact this woman simply served as a mistress. During the entire war in Donbass, I personally met only one cool girl sniper. Her call sign is “Bird”. There is a lot of information about her on the Internet.

Now, of course, there is no such mess. Female snipers who enlist in volunteer units must undergo training and perform combat missions. And they act quite effectively. I say this as a person who is personally involved in training snipers.

“Yaryi” explains: despite the fact that the main selection criterion is the desire to become a sniper, the requirements for girls are very strict. Firstly, they must be physically well developed: sometimes the loads are such that not every man can cope. Secondly, girls must be psychologically stable, since the situations they may have to face may be completely different.

– Considering that a woman is a priori weaker than a man, it is more difficult for her to bear loads and pressure. And you need to be prepared for this, says the instructor.

General training for snipers, says Yary, lasts the same for everyone, regardless of gender: as a rule, two to three weeks. All this time, future shooters are continuously training at the training ground.

“Personally, I have a basic course designed for twenty-one days,” explains the military man. – After its completion, I select candidates who are able to take advanced courses, and we begin to work with them. Those who, for example, were unable to complete the basic course, either remain for retraining or disperse to units where the basic level of training is sufficient. They can, for example, become a regular infantry sniper or even a reconnaissance sniper. But not in the sniper special forces.

– Any girl who has the right physical and psychological qualities can become a sniper?

– Almost anyone can be taught the necessary skills, but not everyone can work highly professionally. A sniper is first and foremost a scout. And here you need to understand that you will have to act for a long time in difficult conditions: dampness, water, dirt, rain, cold, hunger. But in the case of girls, all these moments are taken much more seriously. There are, of course, selfless girls who can also give men a head start. They chop with knives and hand-to-hand, but there are not so many of them. For some reason, most people think that at the front it will be like in the film. She’s so beautiful, with a rifle. But no, it doesn’t work that way.

According to Yaroy, dealing with a woman, no matter how professional she is, is always more difficult than with men. Even in everyday life. We need additional hygiene products and at least some basic household amenities. Plus, the military team is mostly male, which means that a girl needs to be able to adapt and adapt. And here everything depends on the specific person. There are women for whom living with men in the same cubicle, washing in the same shower, going to the toilet “in the fields” – in general, does not pose any problem. But there are others.

“Honestly, I personally don’t see any advantages from female snipers,” the instructor admits. – The presence of representatives of the opposite sex, as a rule, always affects men, they try to once again provide them with help, some signs of attention. That is, a man will be constantly distracted and think not only about completing the task at hand, but also about third-party issues. Therefore, I repeat, I see only one disadvantage here.

Nevertheless, it is a fact: in the Northern Military District zone there are male-female sniper pairs.” Most unit commanders treat girls not as representatives of the fairer sex, but simply as ordinary soldiers, without making any distinction.

“Yary” knows firsthand about female snipers fighting on the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. He says that at one time there were a lot of them, and not Ukrainians, but mercenaries from other countries. Now they have disappeared somewhere. The interlocutor remembered the incident with the liquidation of one of these mercenaries.

– In 2015, not far from the village of Zaitsevo, on the northern outskirts of Gorlovka, a Georgian nationalist battalion was located. It served as a female sniper. She went to the forefront every day and worked around the school. She wasn’t particularly professional, she just went out and shot, shot, shot. Then, after the liquidation of two dark-skinned mercenaries, we had radios tuned to the enemy’s wavelength, and we heard all their conversations. Every morning, when she went out to shoot, we heard on the radio: “Our girl is going to work.” At one time, everyone was pretty fed up with this, we raised an SPG-9 grenade launcher at the school, figured out where it was firing from and hit it there. A few minutes later they heard on the air that she was wounded and that a group was being assembled to evacuate her. We waited until the mercenaries approached and began evacuating, and then struck a second blow.

– If you evaluate professionalism, who is higher class – our girls or mercenaries?

“Of course ours are cooler,” Yary says without hesitation. – If only because mine are all alive, and I’ve already seen a lot of them dead.