War in Ukraine: Uni to uniform - Ukraine's new teenage army recruits
By Jeremy Bowen
BBC News, Kyiv
Published1 day ago
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Maksym Lutsyk,19 (left) and Dmytro Kisilenko, 18 are at war with three days training.
Just over a week ago I met a group of young men who had volunteered at a centre in Kyiv to fight for Ukraine.
Most of them were in their late teens, not long out of school. They told me that after three days' basic training they would head for the front line - or very close to it.
Maksym Lutsyk, a 19-year-old biology student, told me he wasn't fazed about trying to become a soldier after less than a week of instruction. He'd manage, after five years in the Scouts, not just learning backwoods skills, but also some weapons training. He was 10 when Ukraine's long war with separatists sponsored by Moscow started in 2014.
Maksym had gone to join up with his friend Dmytro Kisilenko, 18, who was studying economics at the same university.
The recruits were like any bunch of young lads who had decided they were no longer boys, laughing too loudly when someone told jokes to hide their nerves, or trying a bit of bravado.
Some of them were wearing knee pads that looked too small, as if they had come with skateboards on their 12th birthdays. A few had sleeping bags. One had a yoga mat. When they waited outside for the bus that was going to be taking them to the training base, they looked like friends on the way to a festival - apart from the guns. Each had been given custody of a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
IMAGE SOURCE,JEREMY BOWEN/BBC
Image caption,
Maksym (far left) and Dmytro (centre, with green jacket and white trainers) before their training
I'm in touch with Dmytro and Maksym and the other volunteers. This weekend I went to see them at their posts on the eastern edge of the city, where they have been issued with uniforms, body armour, proper infantry kneepads and helmets.
A bitter wind blew through the checkpoint which the volunteers were trying to turn into a real obstacle with sandbags and steel tank traps. They made the best of their very basic training.
Dmytro told me: "I got used to my gun. I learned how to shoot and how to act in the battle, also many other things that will be very crucial in the fight with the Russians." He laughed, as if he found it hard to imagine what he was contemplating.
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Young volunteers swap their studies for assault rifles as they prepare to defend Kyiv from Russian forces.
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