A female staffer in Russia’s Defense Ministry has received a promotion to become the ministry’s sole female general, following a decree by the country’s supreme commander posted on the Kremlin website on Tuesday.
“To assign the rank of a major general to Knyazeva, Yelena Georgiyevna,” the presidential decree said.
Colonel Knyazeva worked as acting head of the ministry’s main department for international military cooperation in 2010-2011 and now holds the post of the department deputy head.
There were no female generals in active service in Russia’s Armed Forces until recently compared with the Interior Ministry, the Investigative Committee, the Federal Penal Service and the Customs Service where special grades are assigned instead of military ranks.
In the mid-1990s, senior military ranks in the Russian Armed Forces were assigned to the world’s first woman cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova who received the rank of major general of the Air Force and Federal Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund ex-deputy director Natalia Klimova who became a major general of the medical service.
Klimova, however, was later stripped of her rank by a court decision in a high-profile corruption case involving the fund’s former management.
