Traumas of soldiers becoming more visible after Debaltseve

By the evening of Feb. 18, the day of Ukraine’s surrender of the railway junction to Russian forces and their separatist allies, many of them were sleeping drunk on tables or terrifying residents by shooting in the air in the restaurants of Artemivsk, some 40 kilometers northwest of Debaltseve.

“We had an entire city full of mixed-up men, who didn’t know whether to weep or bellow,” said Lena Sorokina, a volunteer of Bakhmut Ukrainian non-government organization, who helps wounded soldiers.
Since then, many shops selling alcohol close down after 6 p.m. in Artemivsk, putting up signs that read “no alcohol sold to soldiers.”
But the reaction of soldiers, many of whom saw their comrades killed by Russian forces on their way out of Debaltseve, and felt lucky to have survived themselves, is not unusual. That’s one way that post-traumatic stress disorder shows – a condition that affects a majority of people who took part in military action, Sorokina says.
Lilia Brunko, a psychologist, who helps as a volunteer in Artemivsk, says that after spending 35-40 days in a war zone, all the fighters experience a degree of psychological changes. Their mental health tends to get worse the longer they are at the front.
Brunko said the main symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder include some of the following: an obsessive feeling of danger, problems with concentration, the guilt of survival. These are often accompanied by insomnia, depression or loss of interest in life. In more complex cases, war veterans who suffer from post-traumatic syndrome risk to slide into alcohol and drug addiction, lose families and commit suicide. They can show aggression or become apathetic, they experience recurring flashbacks and react physically to them, and so on.
After spending weeks under constant shelling, many soldiers start to shudder when they hear any loud noise. “The sound of whistles caused by mines’ blow stuck in my head so strong that I’ll probably start hiding when hear a whistle of a boiling kettle,” said Taras Samchuk, a soldier from the 30th brigade.
Some other soldiers, to the contrary, lose any sense of fear and demand to go back to the front lines. Brunko remembers being called to see a wounded soldier at the hospital, who was hysterically demanding to allow him to go back to fight.
Vitaliy, a soldier who evacuated wounded comrades from the bloody battle in the village of Lohvynove on Feb. 12, remembers the reaction of those soldiers who had to abandon their dead in the field. He calls it “catastrophic.”
“I think some 30-40 percent of our guys will need psychiatric treatment after this campaign,” says Vitaliy, who did not give his last name because he is not authorized to talk to the media.
Brunko, the psychologist, agreed that the psychiatric hospitals will receive many new patients in the coming months “even though the sphere of psychiatry is hugely underdeveloped in our country.”
Sorokina said that a lot of soldiers smile and behave as if nothing serious happened to them at war. “When they smile it’s even worse because it means they keep it all inside,” she said.
Worse still many soldiers reveal psychological traumas only when they go back home. Some of them start drinking, others cry non-stop, yet others clam up and don’t talk about what happened to them in the battle to avoid hurting feelings of their relatives. But only some of those suffering from post-traumatic conditions seek professional psychological or psychiatric help.
By October, more than 1,500 soldiers received treatment at the psychiatric department of the main Kyiv military hospital, its chief psychiatrist Oleg Druz said in a recent interview to Hromadske TV. Volunteers working at the front line say that it’s a fraction of those who needs help. In Debaltseve alone, up to 7,000 soldiers escaped death in the encirclement.
“Some 40 percent of those, who had this treatment, received sick leave” not being able to go back to the war zone because of their traumas, Druz said.
In most cases soldiers have to turn to regular psychiatric hospitals for help. The Ministry of Social policy got Hr 50 million earmarked in the state budget for psychological rehabilitation of soldiers this year.
But for soldiers, getting treated at regular psychiatric clinics might cause trouble in their future lives, said representatives of Valeria Lutkovska, Ukraine’s ombudswoman, who visited soldiers in a psychiatric center in Chernihiv in late February. Some of the problems might include “bans on some types of professions and on receiving a driver’s license.”
Their report said that soldiers would be able to avoid stigma and legal troubles if they were treated in military hospitals. The report also pointed out that psychiatric treatment of soldiers was satisfactory due to frequent visits of relatives, priests and volunteers.
Brunko, the psychologist, says that the role of families is crucial in healing post-war traumas. “There’s still low understanding of the need to visit psychologists in our society, especially when we’re talking about strong men who fought in the war,” she said. “So families, close people may help the most. The letters, which the fighters receive from children, are very important for their morale.”