2026-02-24
25 分钟This is The Guardian.
Today, how war has changed Ukraine's men.
Just before we start, this episode does contain strong language.
Four years ago today, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Even though some of the world's most capable intelligence agencies had been warning this could happen,
the Ukrainian leadership were still caught off guard by the scale and the speed of the Russian attack.
And in the early hours of the 24th of February 2022,
President Zelensky announced they were at war with Russia.
and put the country into a state of martial law.
Immediately, if you were at the male age between 1860, you were not allowed to leave the country.
So...
There was all these hard choices going on behind closed doors in every family.
If you were married and maybe had young children, did your partner take the kids and leave,
and all those incredibly difficult conversations were happening in a very short space of time.
And I'm not sure you're ever prepared for that kind of conversation within a family.
Almost overnight, Ukrainian men stopped just being builders or business owners, lawyers or doctors.
Now they were also soldiers, with a duty to protect their country from a foreign aggressor.
Their future was suddenly one filled with guns, tanks, trenches,
drones and the very real prospect that they might end up on the front line.
In the four years since,