00:00A commander distributes rifles to the separate tactical group, replicas that is.
00:05The troops here are only teenagers, some not even that old yet.
00:12This is an after-school club for the kids of Shepetivka in western Ukraine.
00:16They meet three times a week to prepare for life in a country at war.
00:22Olena Drachuk, a junior sergeant in an air defense unit, is the only adult here.
00:27She founded the program in 2015 with funding from donations, grants, and the local government.
00:33After Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, the club's activities took on a
00:37new urgency.
00:38But Olena says her mission is bigger than just training future soldiers.
00:44Today, you want to invest a maximum in bringing up this generation, because the future depends
00:50on them.
00:51Only if they correctly understand who they are, that they are citizens of Ukraine, that
00:56they are needed here, that they can develop the country.
01:00Only then will there be a future here.
01:04Olena acts mostly as a supervisor as the older kids teach the younger ones hard military
01:08skills like how to assemble a real Kalashnikov.
01:12They use wooden rifles for the drills, but there's no playing around.
01:16They're fully aware that their life may someday depend on this training.
01:22They enforce discipline and relish difficult conditions like the brief downpour that drenches
01:28the field today.
01:30Sixteen-year-old Anilo is one that the younger kids look up to.
01:34Both his parents serve in the military, and he's committed to doing the same.
01:38As for whether I'm ready to go and fight on the front line, in the hot spots, I think
01:44so, yes.
01:45For one thing, because this is my duty as a citizen of Ukraine, I've gained basic skills
01:51here that will help me in my training in the future and help me push the enemy out
01:55of our country.
02:01At 12, Stepan is the second youngest in the group.
02:04He hopes to take a different route.
02:06Do you think you'd ever want to be a soldier?
02:14Anything can happen, but I want to study for a civilian job.
02:19There are hundreds of youth groups like this in Ukraine, and that number has grown significantly
02:23since the full-scale invasion.
02:26That's according to the Youth and Sports Ministry, which provides direct financial support to
02:30the larger ones.
02:31In the last two years, the ministry held conferences for youth groups across the country that involved
02:3674,000 young people.
02:40Now in Ukraine, it's a time of internal reflection.
02:45These days, parents are rethinking the question of how to raise their children so that they
02:50are citizens of an independent and capable country.
03:00After two hours of exercises, spirits are high.
03:04But the walls are covered with sobering reminders of the war.
03:08These young men are graduates of the program who have died on the front lines.
03:12Although other graduates are still there fighting.
03:17I worry.
03:18When we chat, I know they can't immediately go online and read my messages.
03:23But I'm always checking the messages to see if they've read what I sent, whether they've
03:27been online, whether everyone is there.
03:31They don't all answer right away.
03:33But if they read the messages, then everything is fine.
03:38As they change back into their civilian clothes, members of this separate tactical group are
03:42just kids once again.
03:45Some of them still have five or six years before they become adults and have to make
03:49adult decisions.
03:50For others, that milestone is just a few months away.
