+ infoThe campers, some clad in combat fatigues, carefully aim their assault rifles. Their instructor offers advice: Don’t think of your target as a human being. So when these boys and girls shoot, they will shoot to kill. Most are in their teens, but some are as young as 8 years old. They are at a summer camp created by one of the country’s radical nationalist groups, hidden in a forest in western Ukraine. The camp has two purposes: to train children to defend their country from Russians and their sympathizers _ and to spread nationalist ideology. The camp is called “Temper of will.”
In this July 29, 2018 photo, Yuri "Chornota" Cherkashin, head of Sokil (Falcon), the youth wing of the nationalist Svoboda party, sits with his AK-47 rifle at the "Temper of will" summer camp in a village near Ternopil, Ukraine. "We never aim guns at people," he tells his campers. "But we don't count separatists, little green men, occupiers from Moscow as people, so we can and should aim at them."
