How Ukraine’s Teenagers Are Growing Up in Wartime

I
met Karina on a sunny hillside in Eternal Glory Park in central Kyiv last April. The spring tulips and cherry blossoms that line the park were in full bloom. Ukraine’s omnipresent flowers have a rebellious quality during wartime. We sat to talk as the shouting and honking of a nearby protest to free Ukrainian POWs echoed through the park. Karina attends a premedical high school here. She loves synchronized swimming and doing photo shoots for Instagram with her friends.

In the early morning of Feb. 24, 2022, when Karina’s family first started to hear the rumble of shelling, they decided to leave Kyiv for what they thought would be the relative safety of their home in the northwestern suburb of Hostomel. She spent a harrowing first night in their basement with her cousins, aunt, and mother, explosions closing in, helicopters circling. In the morning, they realized they were in the center of the Russian advance, which first targeted Hostomel’s airport. Alternating between long nights in the basement and frequent runs for supplies, Karina watched tanks roll down the neighborhood streets. Talk of escape was stifled by the revelation that Ukrainians had blown up most of the nearby bridges to slow Russia’s advance.

Two years later, there were still shrapnel holes in the window of her bedroom, where she takes classes online when she doesn’t commute into Kyiv. The family had eventually escaped, spending time in Poland and Slovenia, but Karina, 16, had yearned to be home, and was grateful when they returned: “Ukraine has my heart.”

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth year, Ukrainian teens are coming of age amid the drumbeat of death and destruction, a generation forged by war. Misha and Hlib build weapons after school. Dasha teaches medical aid as a volunteer and attends funerals for soldiers and rallies for the release of POWs on weekends. Timofy dreams of being an actor; he takes theater classes in a basement and plans to leave the country before he’s 18. Other young men are intent on joining the fight.

At a leadership program for youth who want to join the military when they are of age, teenage boys were packed into a gymnasium lined with mats and mirrored walls. The room felt warm and damp from body heat. Soldiers barked commands. The young men, ranging in age from around 14 to 17 and carrying rifles, dropped and jumped up and rolled on the floor until some were grunting with effort or collapsed, red-faced and gasping for breath. Their bodies were lean and muscled, grim determination in their clenched jaws. In peacetime, perhaps these boys would be star athletes, or training to work in Ukraine’s once-burgeoning tech industry.

Outside, the boys were climbing and crawling through an agility course when an air-raid siren blared across the campus. Dozens of trainees dropped what they were doing and ran. They would wait in the nearest subway station until the alert was lifted.

As we sat in the tunnel, I asked if they are missing out on a normal adolescence. “We are losing something,” 17-year-old Ygor said. Oleks, 17, finished the thought: “But we are also gaining something. Of course, if we want to have a good childhood, we can flee to Poland, but it means losing this country.”

DASHA SPENDS EVERY waking moment trying to help. “I don’t have time to go to school,” she told me. When we met, she was spending a Wednesday volunteering at an organization that provides training in the basics of trauma medicine to civilians. Her plan for her upcoming 17th birthday was to teach a course in stopping massive bleeds and then drink kombucha with colleagues at the center.

Two days later, while photographing Dasha at the funeral of a fallen soldier, I saw a young woman weaving with her camera through the packed crowd of mourners. She worked silently and confidently amid a pushy crowd of older male photographers. I wondered who this very young talent was. Later that day, at a democracy-themed high school in Kyiv’s artsy Podil district, I immediately recognized her among the students.

Anna, 18, wears blue mascara and baggy jeans. She spoke perfect English; after a massive attack on Kyiv on Oct. 10, 2022, her parents sent her to do a year of high school with family friends in suburban New York. While she found it interesting, it was excruciating for her to be away from her family while they could be in danger. She was relieved when they allowed her to come back to Kyiv to finish her senior year. In her spare time, Anna raises money for equipment for the armed forces, and she has been learning how to shoot a rifle with friends. On weekends, she helps with construction projects in the northern suburbs, and works with fellow students on a community therapy garden for soldiers with PTSD. “It’s important to help people clean up and rebuild,” she says, “because you never know when it could be your house.”