This is The Guardian.

Today, how war has changed Ukraine's men.

Just before we start, this episode does contain strong language.

Four years ago today, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Even though some of the world's most capable intelligence agencies had been warning this could happen,

the Ukrainian leadership were still caught off guard

by the scale and the speed of the Russian attack. And in the early hours of the 24th of February

2022, President Zelensky announced they were at war with Russia.

We have a war with Russia.

...and put the country into a state of martial law.

Immediately, if you were at a male age between 1860, you were not allowed to leave the country.

So there was all these hard choices going on behind closed doors

in every family. If you were married and maybe had young children, did your partner take the

kids and leave? And all those incredibly difficult conversations were happening in a very short

space of time. And I'm not sure you're ever prepared for that kind of conversation within a family.

Almost overnight, Ukrainian men stopped just being builders or business owners, lawyers or doctors.

Now they were also soldiers with a duty to protect their country from a foreign aggressor.

Their future was suddenly one filled with guns, tanks, trenches, drones,

and the very real prospect that they might end up on the front line.

In the four years since, up to 600,000 Ukrainians are believed to have been killed, injured or have gone missing.

And the war continues to grind on with no end in sight.

Tracy McVeigh, one of the Guardian's most experienced conflict reporters, has spent decades travelling to war zones around

...