Volunteers who signed up at the beginning of the war with Russia are mentally and physically exhausted and are no longer being replaced by younger fighters
When the Russian missiles began to fall, some of the Ukrainian troops sprinting for the cover of a nearby basement were quicker than others. “There was one soldier, he was 48. He was really slow and there was a queue of people behind him waiting to get in,” said Andriy Piddubnyak, a Ukrainian serviceman who is also in his forties. No one died but the delay was “really dangerous”, he said. It was also uncomfortably familiar.
