When Ukraine’s Girls’s Guard put out an invite for a survival and self-defense course, 700 ladies signed up. However the room on the Kyiv city corridor the place the coaching was scheduled to happen on Saturday might solely maintain as much as 300 folks, so extra dates have been added.
The ladies studied every part from learn how to pack an emergency bag, the place to get crucial provides and learn how to cease bleeding.
At one level, one of many instructors, Oleksandr Biletskiy, began speaking about survival in a metropolis that has been minimize off from primary companies, telling the attendees that now was the time to make plans with their neighbors.
“Determine learn how to divide duties. Who will cook dinner, who will maintain the aged, who shall be with the youngsters,” Biletskiy, a navy professional, stated.
He went into the significance of conserving good hygiene in discipline situations: determine the place the bathroom shall be, hold your trash in luggage, and, within the worst case state of affairs, be ready to bury the useless shortly. At one level, he stated that in a disaster state of affairs, burying folks vertically can save area and time.
Natalia Skryabina, a 36-year-old animation artist, got here to the coaching as a result of she needed to be ready for a disaster state of affairs, be it a pure catastrophe or a struggle.
“We are able to’t predict what occurs on the opposite facet. Right here in Kyiv, we nonetheless really feel like we’re very far-off from it, however folks within the east are speaking otherwise, as a result of they’ve already skilled it, they know something can occur,” she stated.
“Eight years in the past, no person anticipated that one thing like that would occur,” she stated, referring to the struggle within the east and Russia’s resolution to annex Crimea.
Skryabina stated that after a good friend informed her in regards to the course, she learn notes made by individuals who had beforehand attended.
“However this taught me extra in regards to the mind-set in disaster. The right way to be ready and learn how to keep calm,” she stated, including that she was utilizing the coaching to verify she was ready for any eventuality. “I’m going to purchase a hearth extinguisher now,” she stated.
Through the hands-on self-defense coaching, two ladies practiced utilizing their fingers to avert a possible aggressor.
“By no means make a fist. It doesn’t work, you’ll break your fingers, use your palms,” Victor Kraevskiy, one of many instructors, informed the ladies assembled within the ornate corridor.
Yulia Kesaieva contributed to this report.
