“Spending my youth in the forests of Kreminna”. Stories of students forced to go to war by Russia

“Now I am incredibly tired… My parents are probably waiting for my call, but I don't know what to tell them. I have no strength left for words. I have no strength for emotions. I laugh, but I realize what a burden my soul has. Can I bear it?” said the soldier Yurii Debretseni in his post.

Yurii's Instagram bio reads: “Spending my youth in the forests of Kreminna”. When he went to the front, he was 19. A student of the History Department of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, he reported to the military enlistment office the next day of the great war.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, many students have joined the Defense Forces: some continued to study remotely, some took a break, and some dropped out of school for the duration of the war. The hromadske article explains how student soldiers decided to serve and what they think about university life.

“It's a shame that someone is wounded and I am not”

Yurii Debretseni admits that he used to think the army was “something trashy”.

However, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, he saw military students being taken to defend the Kyiv region in the dormitory of Shevchenko University, and this was the main impetus for action.

“I felt a sense of shame inside. I wanted to be with the defenders, and every time I saw them, I felt it,” Yurii recalls. However, he was not recruited into the army at first — he had to wait. Later, after he was accepted into the Armed Forces in June 2022, he wrote:

“Even when I am defending Ukraine, I am still ashamed. I'm ashamed that someone is storming and I'm sitting in a trench. I'm ashamed that someone is wounded and I'm not. I am ashamed that the guys 200 meters away from me are in more dangerous conditions than I am. I am ashamed that I could not save the life of my brother-in-arms, and he died.”

When Yurii was in training for a month, he felt a certain disappointment in the system: he was upset by the disrespect of the command and the attitude towards his fellow soldiers.

“The vacation was not very good”

The first vacation for a student on A break in studies that involves maintaining the status of a student and returning to it after a fixed period of time.academic leave, now an infantryman, was last year in July. A year later, he was in combat in the east. He had 10 days, half of which he decided to spend in the capital and the other half at his parents' home. But as it turned out, five days at home was even too much.

“The vacation was not very good, to be honest. It was hard. I thought it would be better if I went to Kyiv for a longer time. It's quiet at home, and it seems to make me even more depressed. And when I was in the capital, it struck me as indifferent,” Yurii recalls.

He added that he was struck by the evening Khreshchatyk with its noise, music, and drunken civilians. One of them even shouted at Yurii: “The service is over, come here!” Although the student usually ignores all this, he felt disappointed this time.

“I would like to see everyone who drinks at night mobilized. But here, at the front, there are enough of them, so there are different opinions on this. I just want all these indifferent people to get out of Ukraine,” the soldieris indignant.

On joining Azov

In September 2023, he transferred to Azov. He chose this particular unit because he knew there were people with ideas there. Yurii was motivated to take this step by his friend. Before, the student thought it would be difficult for him: “I am a rather physically weak person, I weigh 60 kg, I have never done sports.”

“I was transferred because I served with drunks for a year. I'll be honest. The commanders were indifferent. They did not appreciate the personnel. I was told that if you want to be respected in this team, you have to bring vodka, not an assault. This exists in the Armed Forces, and we have to fight it,” theguy said.

He added: “When I served with the drunks, I had no one to talk to in person. At all. It lasted for a year and it gave me a point where it's hard for me to communicate with people in real life. I may not call my parents for a week. They know about it because I told them right away.”

“This kid has never even smoked in his life”

Yurii does not get in touch with his group at the university, where he studied before his academic leave. Only with two groupmates who are not indifferent to the war. He has no desire to communicate with his peers, and indeed with anyone else. He feels more comfortable this way.

The student said that sometimes he has an opinion about people who have an active civic position but do not go to war. “I saw a comment from a student: ‘I'm studying. Should I quit my studies?’. It sucks to see this. I left my studies,” the soldierreproaches.

He also recalled seeing many young people among the Azov recruits. One of them said: “Ugh, I'm going to die from this smell of cigarettes.” Yurii thought: “This kid has never even smoked in his life. The cream of the Ukrainian nation is here now. And someone else is still drinking.”

“I realized that this is not the way to live”

Another soldier, Danylo Vihilianskyi from Kryvyi Rih, also came to Kyiv to study at the University of Architecture and Construction. Like many of his peers, he wanted to be as far away from his parents as possible, looking for a dream in the capital. He says that his life before the great war was no different from that of his peers: periods, parties in the dormitory, and periods again.

However, Danylo did not want to study anywhere, but his parents insisted. His father is a builder, so he recommended the specialty. But in his first year, he realized that it was not for him. And this was one of the reasons why he decided to go to war. From the first days of the full-scale invasion, the sophomore stayed in his dormitory.

“I was doing nothing useful for society, destroying myself with alcohol. Eventually, I realized that this could not go on. If I don't want to study and be something useful doing this job in the future, like rebuilding, I have to do something else. I decided to join one of Kyiv's volunteer battalions,” thestudent recalls.

He also took an academic leave. He realized that it would be difficult because he had never done anything in his life that could help in the war. He was not immediately recruited into the army either. His first attempt was in the early summer of 2022.

“I did not play sports, I was in a terrible physical condition. I was sent home. I didn't give up, I got in touch with one of the soldiers who had already served and consulted him about what I should do to prepare myself. I spent the next two months preparing,” Danylo said. A few months later, after the training, he went as an infantryman to the Zaporizhzhia direction.

“I can say that I like it then. It probably sounds silly, but this life, when you live in the woods for two months without hot water, washing yourself outside when it's not even summer, is cool. It makes you realize what you are capable of,” theguy said. He spent almost a year in the Volunteer units within the Armed Forces or the National GuardDobrobat, and then moved to the Air Force, to air defense.

Danylo has friends who did not go to war but continue to study. He believes that if they can benefit from it, then so be it. The same groupmates who are now studying to become construction workers can later rebuild the country.

“As for parties, I like to party on vacation myself. I love going to bars. I'm okay with it because people need to be distracted. But I don't understand flaunting it. Still, we should not forget that there is a struggle for our existence,” the soldieradded.

“I lived on a scholarship for two years while in the army”

Some students combine their studies with war, like the guy with the call sign Phoenix. The first-year political science student at Vadym Hetman Kyiv University has been in the army since the first day of the full-scale invasion. He joined an initiative group that later grew into the Revenge volunteer battalion.

“I didn't take any academic leaves because I lived on a scholarship for the past two years while in the army. Despite the lack of time, I sometimes write papers to avoid losing my budgeted place,” said Phoenix. He added that it was difficult to collect equipment, but he did it gradually thanks to charity fundraisers.

In the Revenge, Phoenix was not used in combat at first — because of his age, equipment, and lack of proper gear. He says that if he was in the field, he was sitting in a trench, hiding from shells.

Later, he tried to choose a specific military specialty: as an assault pilot, UAV operator, liaison officer, or artilleryman. He has served in the defense of Kyiv, the Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv sectors, and more.

“We don't know when the war will end”

There are girls among the student volunteers in the army. Anna Chepynoha is a third-year student at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. In July 2023, she joined the Separate UAV Service of the A volunteer military formation under the command of Dmytro Yarosh, created in 2015. It is subordinated to the command of the Armed Forces.Ukrainian Volunteer Army. Since the beginning of the great war, the girl realized that she would serve. The question was when?

In August, Anna started going on combat missions in the Zaporizhzhia sector. She tries to combine her service with her studies. The remote form allows her to connect to a seminar or lecture anywhere. It happened even during her time at the positions in between missions.

“I definitely did not plan to take the academic leave and I hope that I will not have to. We don't know when the war will end, and it can delay our studies for a very long time, so I am taking the opportunity to study online, like all my classmates, and combine my military activities with my studies as long as possible,” explained Anna.

She is currently acting as a navigator and learning to be a drone operator.