She is an unusual support for Ukraine in the fight against Russia. Sandra Andersen Eira used to be a member of the Norwegian parliament, but today war is her everyday life. The decision for the life-threatening mission should not have cost her much thought.
Norwegian Sandra Andersen Eira fights Russian troops in Ukraine. The 35-year-old previously sat in the parliament of the Sami, an indigenous people in northern Fennoscandia. As the Eastern European news channel “Nexta” reports, Eira joined the Ukrainian Foreign Legion a week after the war began.
“It took 24 hours from the thought that came to me until I contacted the embassy and was on Ukrainian soil,” quotes “Bild” the politician, who conducted an interview with the Norwegian news portal “abcnyheter”.
The majority of Eira’s family is said to have learned about Eira’s mission only by chance from the media. Because before that she only told two siblings and a few friends from the USA. However, family and acquaintances reacted with understanding: “No one is surprised. And anyone who knows me understands why I’m here.”
For a few weeks now, the Norwegian has been sharing impressions of her new life on Instagram. Before the start of the war, her profile still showed impressive Norwegian landscapes, but now you mainly see weapons and gunfire.
Incidentally, in addition to her job in Parliament, Eira worked as a fisherman. “If I had been afraid of dying, I would never have worked at sea,” Eira told abcnyheter. Of course, her earlier work was something completely different from the war. But Eira is not completely fearless either. She told abcnyheter: “The only thing I’m afraid of is going home. Because then the hard fight begins.”
