Back then she enlisted with a volunteer medical battalion and spent 11 months serving as a paramedic on the front line. "Age and gender play no role in the motivation to fight," she said. "After Euromaidan my social circle strongly felt that if we don't take up the fight, we will lose the right to freedom of conscience, to self-identification, and to shape the place we live in." But the reality was that when the Donbas war broke out the Ukrainian Army -- which was haunted by corruption, a lack of basic supplies, and many other problems -- was often openly hostile to women, she said. "We kept on hearing phrases like, 'War is not a place for women,’ 'You'd better stay at home with children,' or, 'When a woman dies, everybody's morale is lost' all the time," she recalled.
