Just over a week ago I met a group of young men who had volunteered at a centre in Kyiv to fight for Ukraine.

Most of them were in their late teens, not long out of school. They told me that after three days’ basic training they would head for the front line – or very close to it.

Maksym Lutsyk, a 19-year-old biology student, told me he wasn’t fazed about trying to become a soldier after less than a week of instruction. He’d manage, after five years in the Scouts, not just learning backwoods skills, but also some weapons training. He was 10 when Ukraine’s long war with separatists sponsored by Moscow started in 2014.

Maksym had gone to join up with his friend Dmytro Kisilenko, 18, who was studying economics at the same university.

The recruits were like any bunch of young lads who had decided they were no longer boys, laughing too loudly when someone told jokes to hide their nerves, or trying a bit of bravado.

Some of them were wearing knee pads that looked too small, as if they had come with skateboards on their 12th birthdays. A few had sleeping bags. One had a yoga mat. When they waited outside for the bus that was going to be taking them to the training base, they looked like friends on the way to a festival – apart from the guns. Each had been given custody of a Kalashnikov assault rifle.

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