Ukraine needs more soldiers as its troops defend Ukrainian territory and carry out an offensive inside Russia. An elite Ukrainian military unit offers civilians a one-week tryout as soldiers.
Editor’s note: The Ukrainian military’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade reviewed the images before publication.
As Ukraine continues its mass conscription drive to fight Russia, more and more civilians find themselves in the armed forces. Many units do their own recruiting.
An elite 3rd Separate Assault Brigade even allows civilians to try living and training like soldiers for a week, to give them a quick sense of what they will face if they are conscripted or decide to sign up for the military voluntarily.
Live and train like soldiers
At the training base of what the military calls «Test Week», at an undisclosed location in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, several dozen people are exercising on a clearing that serves as an improvised battlefield. Carrying mock-ups instead of real guns, they learn how to move and regroup during an attack, to cover their comrades and evacuate the wounded.
Every few minutes, firecrackers explode, simulating grenades and artillery fire.
Although Ukraine’s draft is for men who are 25 to 60 years old, several of the participants were younger than that but still eligible to volunteer to serve in the military, with a minimum age of 18.
Twenty-year-old Oleksii Sichkar is younger than conscription age but old enough to serve. He believes if Ukraine doesn’t have enough soldiers, the Russians might one day enter his hometown of Ladyzhyn, in the central Ukrainian Vinnytsia region, far from the front line.
“We’re not sure that hostilities won’t come to our area,” he says, before joining other trainees for a next exercise.
