Ukrainian reservists train amid Russian build-up

(12 Jan 2022) In her daily life Alisa Bankovska works as a communication specialist in the cyber security sphere, but every weekend she attends special military training to learn how to defend herself and her family from possible Russian aggression. For 18 months, Bankovska has been gaining weapons and first aid training as well as military tactical skills in a government program preparing reservists to form Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Forces. Last summer Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed the law establishing reservist units who would defend the country’s sovereignty amid the build-up of Russian troops at their shared border. Bankovska, a mother of a young son, believes the more people who get trained, the less likely an “enemy“ would be willing to attack. In 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula after the ouster of its Moscow-friendly leader and threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in the country’s east, where more than seven ye