Georgians In Ukrainian Army Fight 'Common Enemy'
Veterans of Georgia's 2008 war with Russia are the first foreign nationals to serve officially in the Ukrainian army, following a new law adopted last year. RFE/RL Ukrainian Service producer Levko Stek spoke with them as they prepared for action in eastern Ukraine.
An excerpt:
Within a few days, Nadiya Savchenko went from a Russian prison cell to the floor of the Ukrainian Parliament. The 35-year-old pilot had spent nearly two years in captivity after Russia charged her with complicity in the deaths of two journalists in eastern Ukraine. Draping a Ukrainian flag over her shoulders and carrying a smaller Crimean Tatar flag, she stoically approached the lectern at the front of the hall and took down the banner that lawmakers had hung there calling for her release. She then replaced it with a different banner—this one for the Ukrainians still being held in Russia. In a glimpse of the political firebrand she could become, Savchenko, channeling the popular disappointment with the government of President Petro Poroshenko, chastised the roomful of politicians.
“I won’t let you sitting in these seats in the Verkhovna Rada forget about the guys who started laying down their lives for Ukraine on Maidan and [who] continue to die for her,” she said in her first speech to the national legislature. “They are still standing and won’t lie down in their graves until we get that Ukraine they died for.”