Four years of full-scale war have produced a dramatic transformation of the Ukrainian fighting man, turning a generation that might have resembled their farmer grandfathers into battle-hardened warriors who style themselves as modern Cossacks, a New Statesman report from the front line has revealed, as "Hvylya" reports.

The shift was starkest among the volunteers of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, where soldiers were usually in their twenties, skewing much younger than the reported Ukrainian military average of 43. Their appearance told its own story: long, whiskery moustaches, closely shaven heads, and long locks of black hair left to dangle at the back - the Cossack style drawn straight from Ukrainian national mythology.

These men were "vividly unlike their grandfathers, farmers who grumblingly acquiesced to the Soviet imperium, more familiar with tractor engines than automatic rifles and FPV drones," the New Statesman's Will Lloyd observed after spending time with the brigade near the front line in February. "In the space of a single generation the Ukrainian male had transformed. He no longer resembled a peasant farmer but a Cossack."

The transformation went beyond appearance. Scandinavian runes tattooed around arms and up necks signaled ultra-nationalist convictions. The men were simultaneously warriors, engineers, mechanics, software developers, and drone operators - "easily among the most admired men in Ukraine, educated and transformed by revolution and war."

The deeper context was a society that had experienced a revolution in 2013-2014 and then rapidly militarized, a trajectory Lloyd compared to France in the 1790s or the USSR in the 1930s rather than anything in contemporary Western Europe. Crucially, Ukraine remained a democracy throughout.

Nataliya Zubar, a nationalist organizer in Kharkiv whose grandfather had secretly spoken Ukrainian to her during the Soviet era and predicted this war would come, saw the transformation as a dream fulfilled. "We are building the Ukrainian nation," she said, as the power in the cafe where they sat flickered on and off.

Also read: The "Firefighter" Dilemma: Why Victories of Ukraine's Elite Units Create a Hidden Front-Line Threat.