I look at what’s happened in Ukraine and realise the importance of national service

There is a good argument to be made that everyone could devote a small part of peacetime to acquiring habits and skills that might one day become life-savers, writes Mary Dejevsky

The war has given a lot of people a new and very real sense of purpose (AP)

The war in Ukraine has brought the brutality of armed conflict home to generations of Europeans who had lived their whole lives in peace.

It has had a particular immediacy because of satellite television, social media and the millions of refugees who have brought their ineradicable memories into exile with them. Amid all the horror, however, it is possible to identify one positive: the huge mobilisation of, especially, young Ukrainians who immediately volunteered to join the war effort, contributing in whatever way they could.

Many – not only young men – took up arms and set off to fight the enemy, wherever that enemy was to be found. By no means everyone took up arms; many others have helped to organise evacuations, ensure medical care or distribute food supplies. A “PR army” (metaphorically) bombards people like me with information.