Florists, teachers, welders..all ready to die for Ukraine

Training camp laid bare in documentary

- SARA WALLIS

BACK home in Ukraine, gently spoken Mykola was a florist and gardener who loved his tulips and petunias and had plans to marry his girlfriend of six years. It is hard to imagine him pointing a rifle at a Russian enemy, but the 31-year-old will do anything to “be victorious”.

Artem, a 32-year-old specialist jeweller, has left his partner and six-yearold son at home near the Russian border.

Just a few months ago, his main concern was buying a new car or designer clothes. Until war broke out.

Pasha, a 30-year-old welder, says his parents cried when he decided to travel to the UK to learn to fight and knows he may never see them again.

But all three men have arrived, slightly bewildered, in a massive aircraft hangar in Britain where they are sleeping on mats on the floor and awaiting the start of their five-week intensive training.

In a BBC documentary, Stacey Dooley follows these ordinary Ukrainian men as they receive a crash course – usually taking six months – from the British Army on how to be front-line soldiers.

It is a bleak start as all the new recruits are all asked: “Are you ready to die?”

“It was moving because everyone together said ‘Yes’,” says Artem. “It’s difficult but I didn’t have a choice. I am ready to give my life in order for my son to live in a free country. We must end this war.”

Masseur Yaroslev, 28, who was moved to sign up when he saw dead children and women at a Kyiv railway station, says: “It’s better I die than children die.”

In Stacey Dooley: Ready For War? the filmmaker says: “These aren’t soldiers. They’re florists, teachers, welders, people with no experience in battle.”