A DULL-eyed soldier at a roadblock stopped our car and demanded papers.
This is not unusual in . Almost four years after Russia’s invasion, checkpoints are a fact of life, like bomb shelters and air raid sirens.
Many men of fighting age are in hiding to avoid press gangs but others venture outCredit: AP
The Sun team’s translator D is led away by a Ukrainian press gangCredit: Peter Jordan
But this was different. Within a few exchanges it was clear something was wrong.
As a foreign journalist in a war zone I am used to attracting scrutiny and occasionally suspicion. We are often driving the wrong way — towards trouble — clad in helmets and body armour.
Uncertain soldiers search our car. Some take pictures of our press credentials to to their bosses.
After the in February 2022 I was held up at gunpoint and ordered out of my vehicle with a rifle levelled at my pounding heart.
It was the first week of the war and strung-out soldiers with little experience of journalists were paranoid that we might be Russian saboteurs.
Usually when we say we are British we get a smile or a cheer, sometimes even a “Boris Johnson!” salute, before being waved on our way.
It is not lost on Ukrainians that Britain has been their chief flag-waver, the first to donate tanks and cruise missiles.
Not this time. No smiles. No jokes. Instead, we were about to witness the ruthless side of Ukraine’s recruiting crisis.
Over the next eight hours my Ukrainian friend and colleague, a journalist I have worked with for years, would be forcibly press-ganged into his country’s armed forces.
Our team of three was ripped apart. My friend — who I will call D — had his liberty taken away.
and I were left stranded without a translator. Our dangerous, expensive and long-planned reporting trip lay in tatters.
These hardships might seem trivial compared to the noble goal of defending Ukraine. Yet the experience has hammered home the depths that Ukraine has plumbed to plug the growing gaps on its front line.
It also revealed the rift between those who serve and those who don’t.
The army needs warm bodies but it has run out of volunteers. This is existential for Ukraine.
When invaded, Ukraine’s armed forces were overwhelmed with more volunteers than they needed. By that July more than a million men and women were in uniform. As units suffered losses they were readily replaced.
That changed in autumn 2023 when Ukraine’s vaunted summer offensive failed. , the commander in chief at the time, declared the war had reached a stalemate. He was sacked for his candour by . (He now serves as ambassador in London).
realisation that the war would not end quickly crystallised the fears of those determined to avoid conscription.
A ‘busification’ gang with a potential conscriptCredit: Supplied
Some are more reluctant to join upCredit: Supplied
Some turned to corruption. The army’s chief psychiatrist — who could declare anyone unfit to serve — was arrested in January this year on suspicion of having taken more than £800,000 in bribes.
Military medical commissions, which had similar powers, were abolished last year over corruption fears.
Under martial law men aged 18 to 60 were banned from leaving the country, with a handful of exceptions.
That law was relaxed in September to let 18- to 22-year-olds move freely.
This was partly because parents were sending their children abroad so they didn’t get trapped in the country on their 18th birthdays.
Yet the conscription age remains 25. Ukraine has resisted pressure — including from key allies — to lower it to 18 because it is politically too toxic.
In August Russian soldiers exploited sparsely-manned positions by ‘infiltrating’ past Ukraine’s defences and advancing ten miles in two days
But all the while its army continues to suffer eye-watering losses. In February President Zelensky said the number of soldiers killed in action stood at more than 45,000, with another 380,000 wounded. It is certainly higher now.
The result is a chronic shortage of soldiers, which has led to dangerous gaps along the 1,000-mile front line.
In August Russian soldiers exploited sparsely-manned positions by “infiltrating” past Ukraine’s defences and advancing ten miles in two days.
It was an extraordinary spurt that threatened to cut a key highway between the towns of and in .
Ukraine is trying hard to compensate with drones. Only last week, D introduced me to a drone team from the elite who were using remote-controlled ground vehicles to re-supply their comrades on the zero line in rural .
This is to avoid the “kill zones” which stretch 20 miles behind the front lines. Anything that moves there can be spotted by surveillance drones and blitzed by attack drones or artillery.
Drone commander Yulia Mykytenko has seen comrades executedCredit: Dan Charity
A Russian rocket attack on the town of Dobropillya in MarchCredit: AP
Previously D introduced me to Ukraine’s first dedicated drone regiment, who enforce that kill zone.
But as one drone commander made crystal clear: “We can only work because the infantry hold the line.”
That message was echoed on Ukraine’s annual Infantry Day on May 6, a national holiday. Billboards declared: “Ukraine stands because the infantry stands.”
Unsurprisingly, infantry is the most severely undermanned part of the army. Theirs is the most dangerous job, and it is only getting harder.
Not only do they face the familiar threats of close combat, artillery and air strikes, they are haunted every moment by the prospect of kamikaze drones.
These soldiers are exhausted. There aren’t enough troops to rotate units off the line to rest and recuperate.
A soldier came up and joked: ‘You need a new driver.’ Then he added: ‘Your friend has gone to war. Bang, bang!’ And that was it. I don’t know what D’s fate will be
Soldiers in the most dangerous positions sometimes endure months in their zero-line bunkers and trenches because “kill zone” drones make even small rotations too dangerous.
This exhaustion and frustration in turn leads to desertion. In one instance last year around 1,700 soldiers fled the French trained Anne of Kyiv brigade — almost half its strength.
Deserters cite the fear of death, never-ending war and bad commanders among their motivations for going AWOL. This is broadly the same as the draft dodgers.
Yet while serving soldiers face those fears the draft dodgers do not. These breeds resentment and contempt.
I cannot forget a conversation I had last year with , a long-serving female lieutenant in command of a frontline drone unit.
The horrors she had seen through the camera of her drone included Russian soldiers executing her captured comrades.
The opera house in Odesa is once again open for performancesCredit: Getty
The Sun’s Jerome Starkey, left, and Peter JordanCredit: Peter Jordan
She said: “Sometimes it annoys me that people still have normal lives, going to restaurants and shops and the cinema.
“Especially when I see men with their girlfriends and children and they are together and they know that my soldiers don’t have those opportunities.”
Cafes and restaurants are buzzing in Kyiv, despite the daily air strikes. Odesa’s opera has. reopened. The contrast with frontline conditions is boggling.
Yulia’s anger grew. She said: “I despise such men who don’t take a rifle and protect their family. And I despise the women who chose such men and who hide them.
“I would be very interested to see what these men will do when the Russians come to their houses and start to rape their wives.”
Yet often it that very love of family — duty to children and home — which leads men to find ways not to fight.
I know one man — who surely has no shortage of courage — who has chosen to put his family first, at the expense of his military service. It is a decision he wrestles with “at least twice a day”. He said: “I think I belong there.”
Perhaps, if you have read this far, you have asked yourself what you would do if you were faced with a choice between duty to your country versus self-preservation. It is easy to answer ‘duty’ when it is theoretical and from afar.
I despise such men whodon’t take a rifle and protect their family. And I despise the women who chose such men and who hide them
Yulia Mykytenko
If duty was your answer then you should know Ukraine has an international legion that anyone can join. Many Brits already have. More than 44 have died.
Ukrainians say they are dying to protect all of from . They would argue the duty is all of ours.
At the roadblock in Kharkiv last week it felt as D was being arrested. When it became clear we couldn’t drive any further, three armed men climbed into our car — fortunately a people carrier — and ordered us to drive back to a recruitment centre in the city.
There I saw at least dozen glum men — mostly in their 40s and 50s — clutching sheafs of papers. They were called in and out of side rooms for rubber-stamp medicals to prove they were fit to fight.
One quipped miserably: “I have to be fit and healthy before I can be killed.”
I made futile appeals to help D. I called friends and contacts in the government and military.
The soldiers at the checkpoint had said D could have 96 hours to report to a draft office in his home town. But now that felt like a deliberate lie to get us to come quietly.
One of the people I asked for help — a colonel in Ukraine’s army — replied almost immediately and fiercely, saying “he should be proud to serve in the armed forces of Ukraine”.
He added: “I don’t think its moral to make exceptions.” It was a fair point.
I know D wasn’t short of courage.
In August 2024 he arranged for us to travel with Ukrainian soldiers into Kursk, sovereign Russian territory that had been captured by Ukraine’s armed forces and was facing ferocious rocket and drone bombardments.
We have reported together from dozens of deadly locations. D was shuffled between offices. Upstairs then downstairs and up again. His fate remained opaque.
At least he hadn’t been grabbed by one of the violent press-gangs who have been filmed hurling fighting-aged men into minibuses. These so-called “busification” gangs are why roughly a million men are in hiding in Ukraine.
My friend D wasn’t hiding. The night before he was press-ganged we had slept in the cellar of an underground field hospital in rural Kharkiv province.
The medic who drove us in and out raced at breakneck speed because of the fears of drones.
All of that counted for nothing. After eight hours waiting in the recruiting centre he was spirited away in secret. We never got to say goodbye. But I received a flurry of terse WhatsApps.
He wrote: “They took me somewhere far.”
“By car.”
Then he added: “I think I am done.”
Who is going to feed his cat, I wondered.
One of the soldiers from the centre came up to me and joked: “You need a new driver.” Then he added: “Your friend has gone to war. Bang, bang!”
And that was it.
I don’t know what D’s fate will be. I pray the army finds a way to harness his skills as a journalist.
And I pray he finds all the best things army life can offer — purpose, pride and camaraderie — as he answers the call of duty in his nation’s hour of need.
