How the War is Straining Ukraine's Military and Shaping its Children
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Today on State of the World, how the war is straining Ukraine's military and shaping its children.

You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. It's Tuesday, January 14th. I'm Greg Dixon. In a few minutes, we'll hear how children in Ukraine are dealing with three years of war. But first, a look at Ukraine's military. Kherson in southern Ukraine is a city Russia would love to take. It sits on the Dnipro River, and its neighborhoods endure attacks from Russian shells and drones daily.

NPR's Brian Mann spent time with a team of Ukrainian soldiers who work under the cover of darkness to defend the city. A Dusk, an armored vehicle, takes me along a rutted farm road near Kherson, a few miles from the bank of the Dnieper River.

A Ukrainian soldier guided me here after NPR agreed not to reveal the exact location. I'm Brian. Yuri. Yuri. Good to see you. Good to see you, Vitalik. In the early winter darkness, I meet a small unit of soldiers, middle-aged men mostly in green wool caps and gloves and worn combat fatigues. Hello.

They're pulling back the camouflage netting, and we're in a kind of half-trench here that's dug back into a forested hillside. And as they pull up the curtain, there's an enormous armored vehicle here hidden away. The unit's leader is a burly guy who goes by the military call sign Grizzly. Keeping real names secret is common protocol for Ukrainian soldiers. NPR has agreed to use only their first names or nicknames for security reasons.

Grizzly tells me by day they keep their weapons carefully hidden from enemy drones and artillery. Can I come up? Yes.

A climb up onto the steel deck of what looks at first like a tank. In fact, it's part armored troop carrier, part mobile artillery. Grizzly tells me it's a Soviet-era weapon system modernized by Ukrainian engineers with a better gun, a kind of machine gun cannon, and better electronics for targeting and navigation in darkness. It performs really well, Grizzly says. It's fast and maneuverable.

It's also deadly. Yuri, the team's gunner, digs through a box of shells, each one longer than my hand. They're chained together so they can be fed quickly into the cannon. We work fast, Yuri tells me. We arrive at the river and we fire, emptying the gun in a minute, a minute and a half at most. Then I tell the driver, let's get out of here.

These kind of hit-and-run tactics are designed to harass the Russians and keep them off balance. But Ukrainian units like this one, with the 1st Battalion of the 40th Coastal Defense Brigade, are dangerously outnumbered. They've been ordered to defend big sections of the Dnipro riverbank.

I put the question to this battalion's commander, who goes by the callsign Kari. Can you hold Kherson? Our job is to destroy the Russians and keep them from advancing and taking more of our territory. And we're getting that done, Kari says.

I asked him about a report shared with NPR by a Ukrainian official that Russia may be building up troops and boats for a major amphibious attack near Kherson. We look forward to the Russians trying to attack us. It would give us a chance to destroy more of them, Kari says.

It's bold talk, but Kari himself symbolizes how thin Ukraine's army is after years of fighting Russia. Do you mind if I ask how old you are? This battalion commander, charged with defending an entire sector of the Dnipro River, is just 24 years old. You sound confident. I'm confident in my men, so I'm confident in myself, Kari tells me.

It's full dark now. I can see the men's breath in their headlamps as they make final preparations, battening the armored hatches and making ready to roll out.

I ask the men with this coastal defense unit if they think they can hold the Dnipro River. Yes, we can hold, Yuri tells me. I don't hear doubts from any of these soldiers about their mission, driving out in darkness night after night to face the Russians. Do you feel nervous? We've gotten used to it, one of the soldiers says.

Another soldier says, this is just what we do now. This is our job. Brian Mann, NPR News, near the front lines in Kherson. As we just heard from Brian, the long war with Russia is straining Ukraine's military. It's also having an effect on the civilian population.

NPR's Hanna Palomarenko takes a look at how the war has shaped the youngest Ukrainians. Alina Dzemko, who is 29, is in a living room with her four-year-old son Yurchik. He is a lively, smiling boy with big brown eyes, sitting on his mother's lap. They flip through a book. This is not a book of fairy tales.

Its title says, "Why isn't dad at home?" Otzemko is training to become a psychologist, but she wrote this book for Yurchik and about Yurchik. The book's chapters are about his real-life questions, which Otzemko answers in the simplest possible language. What is war? Who attacked us? Why did they attack? Who is defending us? What is army?

"Why does dad not leave at home?" are some of the questions.

Otsemko has already sold a thousand copies. This is just one of many new children's books about war published since Russia's full-scale invasion. This is Patron the dog, a popular character in children's comics voiced by actor Mikhailo Karpany for a cartoon. Patron is a dog who works in the rescue service and his main job is sniffing out bombs.

He teaches children how to behave in mind areas and how to handle explosive objects, Karpany explains.

In the cartoon, Patron fights the villains called Booms, who are a simplified representation of explosions. The cartoon's screenwriter Sasha Rubin says, "You have to tell children about very, very scary things that cause really big damage and death without traumatizing them." Patron the dog lives not only on the screen and in books, but on the shelves of toy stores.

This is one of Kyiv's biggest toy stores. There are long aisles with colorful doll boxes and cute fluffy stuffed animals right next to toy tanks, toy drones and models of cars used by the Ukrainian military on the front line.

Victoria Kucherov, a shop assistant, says that demand for military-themed toys has dropped compared with the beginning of the full-scale invasion. She says parents are now doing their best to distract their children from the reality of war. However, many kids ask for military-themed toys.

In their letters to Saint Nicholas, a Santa is known here. She says the wish lists include tanks on remote control and models of military cars. But even children who don't have such toys play games that reflect the war. Parents and teachers from different parts of the country talk about children playing Air Raid, a version of Hide and Seek, or building make-believe checkpoints.

Grandmother Larysa is from the Eastern Donetsk region, which has been hardest hit by fighting. She evacuated to Dnipro with her relatives, including her six-year-old grandson Artem. They asked us not to use their last name for security reasons. Part of the family still lives in Russian-occupied territory. Playing with our grandson has changed a lot during the war, Larysa says, as Artem and his playmates

are constantly making up games based on missile attacks. Either the house collapses in the game, or he builds something with block and then there is a missile attack and we have to rescue children from the rubble. And recently, Larisa says, he invented a new game to hide from a nuclear attack.

Odzemko, as a psychologist, says playing games that reference the war is quite normal for children. Children can't reflect on their experience the way adults can because of their age. Instead, children live by role-playing and games. While we talk, Yurchik plays with a toy drone and a couple of tanks. Odzemko is preparing to write another book about the hardest reality of war.

On June 7th, her husband and Yurchik's father was killed at the front. The title of her new book is Why Did Dad Die? This is a question that many children will keep asking as the war in Ukraine continues. Hanna Palomarenko, NPR News, Kyiv. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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