Ukrainian MP is under fire following his controversial remarks that [the idea of appointing] a female defense minister won’t go down well with the public’.
Commenting new appointments in the Ukrainian government in a briefing Friday, ‘Servant of the People’ senior MP David Arakhamia dismissed the idea of having a woman in a role of Ukraine’s defense minister arguing ‘it won’t go down well with the public’.
He argued some people had bristled at the appointment of Oleksey Reznikov, a civilian taking the defense portfolio, and the government would have faced bigger backlash if they had nominated a woman on claims ‘the war is raging, and you are brining in a lady’.
It must be some ‘evolutionary step’ that will ‘several years’ before Ukraine gets a female defense minister, added Arakhamia.
‘Servant of the People’ MP is no stranger to controversy. In 2019 he drew the blowback over the leaked text messages where he used sexist comments about his party fellow MP Iryna Allakhverdieva calling her a ‘working gal’ who is ‘as sturdy as a ship pine board’.
Many deemed Arakhamia’s latest remarks sexist and inappropriate with ‘European Solidarity’ MP Iryna Gerashchenko proposing to take a disciplinary action against the blundering MP.
In a parliamentary session Friday, she blasted his insulting commentary calling it a ‘slap in the face’ for 32 thousand female soldiers, defending Ukraine in the east of the country, adding ‘five thousand of those are army officers’.
She also took issue with the exiting minister Andriy Taran blaming him for low-quality food, lack of military housing and mammoth 3,5 billion hryvnas salary debt.
It is worth noting that the Verkhovna Rada revisited a 2019 incident involving Iryna Gerashchenko. The ‘European Solidarity’ MP faced a suspension vote after ‘Servant of the People’ MPs took issues with her remarks about ‘green little men’.