Humanitarian Warriors: Isabelle de Pommereau’s Article on Ukrainian Women Trained at MAT Kosovo

Humanitarian Warriors: Isabelle de Pommereau’s Article on Ukrainian Women Trained at MAT Kosovo

Journalist Isabelle de Pommereau recently visited the MAT Kosovo Training School and wrote an article highlighting the work our company is doing in training Ukrainians in IMAS EOD Levels, with a particular focus on women. The article covers the Ukrainian group trained at MAT Kosovo between September and October 2024. The following paragraph and picture has been excerpted from said article. The full article can be found here: https://tol.org/client/article/humanitarian-warriors.html

“You need to find the fuze and remove it,” Burgess instructs the class, with a note of urgency. Beside him, Anastasiia Minchukova, a 23-year-old former linguistics student, translates his words into Ukrainian. In April 2022, she was among the first Ukrainians to attend the school. Since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, she had known that “when I grow up, I won’t have a choice; I will have to fight.” But when war broke out, she was denied a frontline role because of her age. “A mine doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman. We need everyone willing and capable. Ukraine cannot afford to overlook its women,” she says.