Just a week ago, I met a group of young people who had volunteered to defend a base in the capital, Kyiv, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Most of them were still very young and teenagers. And it was as if he had just finished school. They told me that after three days of basic military training, they were sent to the front lines or near them.
One of them, Maxim Lutsk, a 19-year-old biology student, told me he had no problem training for less than a week.
He learned all this because he had been trained as a scout for five years, where he was taught physical training as well as wielding of weapons.
He was ten years old when Ukraine's conflict with pro-Russian separatists began in 2014.
Maxim joined the army with his 18-year-old friend Dimitro, an economics student at his own university.
The young men who enlisted in the Ukrainian army were like a group who decided they were no longer young. They laugh out loud at jokes or try to show a little bravery to hide the pressure on their nerves.
Some of them wore protective nipples on their knees that looked as small as if they had met their skateboard on their twelfth birthday. Some of them had sleeping bags, some had a mat or a window to do yoga.
As they waited for the bus to take them to the training center, they looked as if a group of friends were preparing to go to the fair.
Yes, but they had weapons, every young man had a Kalashnikov rifle.