Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
In 1985, at the age of 15, Violeta Nikonovic jumped out of a plane for the first time. Seven years later, she was recruited to join the paratrooper branch of the Lithuanian Armed Forces. Now, after nearly 40 years and more than 5,000 jumps, Sergeant Nikonovic works as a senior instructor at the Lithuanian Armed Forces Parachute Training Centre. In an interview published on the NATO website, Violeta spoke about her experience as a “paratrooper commander” and what it means to her to train the next generation of paratroopers. “Parachute jumping was initially a hobby for Violeta – a hobby she threw herself into with gusto. By the time she was asked to join the Airborne Parachute Unit of the Field Brigade of the Lithuanian Armed Forces in 1992, she had already completed an impressive 1,000 jumps, averaging no less than 142 jumps per year. With her already extensive experience, she was given the honorary title of “Parachute Commander” shortly after joining the armed forces. Violeta was able to turn the passion she discovered when she was just 15 years old into her career. Having joined the Lithuanian Armed Forces just two years after Lithuania regained independence in 1990, Sergeant Nikonov was part of her country’s historic journey to becoming a NATO ally in 2004. In her career, this meant modernizing Lithuanian parachute regiments to meet NATO standards and contributing to the development of a training centre Paratroopers in Lithuania.
The center, where Violeta currently serves, has evolved beyond training just the Lithuanian Armed Forces – it now also trains troops from NATO partner nations, including Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. Through her tireless dedication, Violeta has been instrumental in educating and mentoring generations of Lithuanians and partner forces alike.
“My brother was an amateur parachutist and invited me to join the parachute club he was a member of when I was 15,” Violeta said. “I spent three months learning the theory and other aspects of skydiving and in the spring of that year we went for my first jump. I remember it well. When the plane took off, my legs were shaking and eventually my brother signalled that it was time to jump. The feeling of jumping was very exhilarating, but it was difficult because the wind that day was very strong and I was physically light, so I veered a little off course and ended up landing on a farm. “Forced deployment means that the parachutist performs jumps with a round parachute that is automatically deployed at a predetermined height. This reduces the risk of human error and makes the jump safer for the troops. If the parachutists want to continue developing their skills, they can target a free fall course at our training centre, learning how to manually deploy their parachutes. Every year we train about 200 forced parachutists and 20 free parachutists, so it is difficult to count the number of people we have trained over the past 30 years!