A woman appointed head of Chaplain Service of the Ukrainian Ground Forces
The Ukrainian Armed Forces say the appointment is part of the army’s new gender policy.
The Ukrainian Ground Forces have appointed a woman as head of their chaplain service, according to a Facebook post by the Ukrainian Ground Forces. The new chief is Colonel Larisa Polyanska.
The leadership justified the appointment with gender policy considerations.
“An important step forward in implementing gender policy for the Ukrainian army!” the service’s press office wrote.
Earlier, the UOJ reported that clergy of the OCU, UGCC, and other denominations have been reluctant to serve as frontline chaplains. In particular, the OCU has only 80 chaplains deployed at the front out of 494 available positions. Dumenko’s leadership has explained this as a “crisis of relations” with the leadership of the Ukrainian Military Chaplain Service.
