Ukraine’s counter-offensive promises to be deadly. These recruits applied anyway.

As Ukrainian commanders prepare for a crucial counter-offensive to push Russian forces back into the war in Ukraine, 23-year-old Vadym, a military recruit from Kiev, says he wants to be on the frontline, even if it means losing his must lose life.

“We’re probably going to die,” Vadym said bluntly, training at a military camp in Yorkshire, England, on Friday. He was one of hundreds of Ukrainians to volunteer for a five-week crash course in basic training as one of the bloodiest stages in the 15-month war is about to begin. Like other recruits, he asked to be identified by his first name only.

Vadym said his gloomy view of his chances of survival was widely shared by his fellow recruits, all of whom are now halfway through the course.

“They want to fight, and being in hell on the front lines is part of that,” Vadym said, his boyish face covered in camouflage paint. “I realized all the dangers. It just doesn’t matter.”

He stopped himself: “Of course it matters, but still, it is the price we pay.”

It could be weeks, if not months, before Vadym and others currently undergoing basic training actually get into combat. The timing of Ukraine’s promised counter-offensive has been kept a closely guarded secret, though Ukrainian leaders have said in recent days they are ready for it.

That young Ukrainians are now enlisting, in time to participate in a military operation that could go on indefinitely, draws comparisons to American men and women who enlisted for military service after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

However, there is an important difference: the survivors of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan returned to a relatively safe homeland. The Ukrainians who crawled through muddy trenches during training exercises on Friday and stormed a makeshift hotel may be forced to fight for their country’s territory against neighboring Russia for years to come.

And while Western armed forces generally spend years in training, and many who enlist are professional soldiers who want to pursue careers in the military, the Ukrainians have “a different mentality,” said Second Lieutenant Jordan Turton, a British infantry officer who works with the recruits.

“Five weeks ago one of them was a translator, one of them worked in sales, one of them was a hairdresser,” Lieutenant Turton said. “The prevailing feeling is that they want to defend their country, defend their loved ones, defend their friends, their family.”

The military exercises in the rolling green and yellow valleys of Yorkshire – similar to the steppe of southeastern Ukraine where parts of the offensive are expected to unfold – were the latest in a mission that has trained nearly 15,000 recruits over the past year.

It was carried out on Friday by British and Norwegian troops who recently started showing Ukrainian recruits how to disable drones – a nod to their growing importance on the battlefield, particularly in the trench warfare that has become a hallmark of fighting between Russian and Ukrainian infantry. .

Lieutenant Turton, who recently completed his own basic training, said the Ukrainian recruits were aggressively eager to learn.

“To be honest, when I look back at this stage of my training, they are much better than me,” he said.

Just over six weeks ago, one of the recruits, who gave only his first name, Ihor, was working as a stonemason in Lviv. He said his wife and two children were shocked when he announced that he would volunteer for the war effort.

“And when they calmed down, they understood,” said Ihor, who was born in 1990 – the last year Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. While democracy and other Western ideals have always been part of his values, it was only in recent years that he began to see Russia as a threat, Ihor said through a translator.

“The Russian story states that we are brother nations,” Ihor said. “But a brother does not come to a brother with a gun in his hands.”