To find out what it’s like in the trenches, we spoke to a recently discharged Ukrainian soldier and a therapist stationed in a military hospital.
To most, war is a game of numbers – a passing headline, a matter of never-ending territorial disputes, bearing little semblance to everyday life. Few stop to consider the suffering endured by the soldiers fighting for the sovereignty of Ukraine.
A staggering 46% of active, combat-exposed soldiers in Ukraine have been formally diagnosed with PTSD, 21% with complex PTSD and 34% with depression. An estimated 31,000 have been killed.
The repercussions of the war will haunt Ukraine for generations.
Arseniy* is a recently discharged soldier, having served in the Kherson region for three years. After sustaining a blast and a leg injury early in his service, he continued to fight as his health deteriorated slowly. Eventually, he began to lose consciousness on a regular basis, and was involuntarily discharged for medical reasons.
Becoming a soldier was a childhood dream for him, and having gone to military college, faking the documents to run away was simply never an option. “I believe everyone must commit to their calling. As a soldier, it is my duty to serve and teach others how to fight better.”
So, leaving his wife and teenage daughter behind, away he went.
A typical day of a soldier is largely dependent on circumstances beyond their control. “It’s something you can never quite predict. At times, we’ll get time off to do chores, when it is safe to do so. Shower, shave, cook, prep for the next mission – as close as it gets to normal life,” Arseniy told us.
“But if you’re on duty, you’re sat in a trench shooting and being shot at. This can go on for weeks, sometimes months. On occasion, we’ll get a week or two of rest, so to speak.
“In an ideal world, I would have loved to forget it all. But unfortunately, the human memory works in a way such that we never can. There were times when we were surrounded, a hair’s breadth away from death, under non-stop fire for a solid half an hour.”
Despite his otherwise poetic vocabulary, he struggles to find the words for emotions felt at war, saying they’re comprehensible only to someone who’s experienced them too.
“War is dirt. War is blood. War is the smell of gunpowder, death and rot. It’s not exciting or romantic; it is pain, and it is loss. How can I truly make you understand what it’s like to see a group of my boys off, and only have a handful come back?” Arseniy said.
“War goes against the very notion of our existence; it is the antithesis to human life. War changes you forever; nobody makes it back home quite the same.”
Upon returning, he was forced to reevaluate his outlook on life. Issues that seemed to be of grand importance before no longer worried him anywhere near as much.
“It doesn’t matter if your phone gets stolen or your car breaks. Every issue is solvable, as long as you’re alive to solve it. Life is like floating in a river. You can thrash and struggle, or you can let the current take you where you need to go.”
We asked what the one thing he would want to communicate to a foreign audience: “We don’t need pity or compassion. If you and I are sat having a cup of tea, I’ve got some milk to put in it, and you don’t, if I tell you I feel sorry for you, but won’t share the milk, you won’t feel much better, will you?
“We need help. All we need is the bare necessities to fight; we can take it from there. Because evil, in all of its forms, must be punished.”
Aside from physical injuries, the mind suffers immensely from the stress of war. To deal with the mental repercussions, most military hospitals are equipped with a team of psychiatrists, helping patients readjust to normal life after sustaining a battlefield injury or escaping captivity.
Alexander is a therapist with over 20 years of experience. On top of his paying clients, he volunteers in a military hospital almost full-time. When the war started, he called his friend in the army, asking how he could be of use.
“I knew this was my calling. Helping people with their mental health is my strong suit,” he tells us as he shares some standout cases.
One woman had to walk for 40 days to escape Russian captivity, having just sustained a blast wound, affecting half of her face. Throughout her journey in the freezing cold of February in Ukraine, she would sleep outside, occasionally knocking on doors and asking people to hide her in their attic for a while.
On multiple occasions, the houses were raided and searched by Russian soldiers, as she sat in silence, praying that she would not be found and taken hostage. The fear and agony of those moments, she says, she will never forget.
As a result, on top of severe insomnia, she became afraid of open spaces, rendering her virtually incapable of going outside for fear of being seen.
This was due to her survival being dependent on remaining hidden for so long. She was sent to a Mental Health Centre for Victims of War Crimes, where, after months of intensive therapy, she was able to reenter society.
Another patient, after being discharged from duty and reuniting with his family, appeared to be adjusting perfectly well during the daytime. At night, he got up, got out a ball of yarn, and began tying it around the perimeter of the entire apartment.
Chairs, tables, boxes – all tangled up in one big web by morning-time. When questioned about this behaviour, he stated calmly: “I’m mining the apartment. If anyone comes in, they’ll just explode.”
Alexander tells me people often react in peculiar and unpredictable ways, becoming violent in everyday interactions, struggling to navigate everyday communication. More severe cases of PTSD result in psychosis, which is treatable, but sometimes incurable.
One soldier, on active duty at the time, decided he couldn’t take it anymore. His solution? Cutting off his arm. He was intercepted by his fellow troops, so his attempt was rendered unsuccessful, and his arm remained intact.
The soldier was sent off for psychiatric evaluation, which revealed that he had entered psychosis. This condition is crucial to identify early on. Often starting out as seemingly harmless, it can quickly make a person, especially one with perpetual access to weapons, a danger to themselves and others.
Alexander reminds me that the doctors and nurses undergo psychiatric evaluation too: “They’re very much affected, seeing people constantly in pain, not sleeping, that isn’t easy either.”
The therapists themselves must routinely report to staff members senior to them, consulting each other on particularly difficult cases. “Maybe it’s better to pretend that none of it is real. I’m not entirely sure myself, to be completely honest.
“Doing this job, I’ve met real heroes. Over and over again, I meet people that yearn to go back to the frontlines, regardless of the suffering they’ve already endured.”
The final case he shares is of a woman who was part of the search and rescue squad, responsible for finding wounded soldiers on the frontlines and nursing them back to life.
Stationed about 10 kilometres from the frontline, her house was hit by a rocket in the middle of the night. As a result, the ceiling collapsed on top of her, trapping her body, narrowly missing her head, but nearly crushing and suffocating her to death.
Another team member managed to lift the ceiling enough that she could breathe, but they were unable to move to call for help.
For an hour, they waited to be found, eventually making it out alive. Having developed insomnia due to experiencing this mid-sleep, alongside a fear of tight spaces, she was determined to get better so she could return and keep treating wounded soldiers.
“At the end of the day, no person living in Ukraine is in a fully sound state of mind right now. The constant physical and audible reminders of danger keep the mind in a constant state of distress,” Alexander said.
“People go to bed every night, having to make peace with the fact that they could never wake up again.”
Featured image courtesy of Peter Sazonov.