Gonna be a short(er) update tonight. I’m feeling much better – not so run down – but it’s another busy week.
I want to start tonight and, frankly, focus on this reporting from Ellen Barry and Antoine d’Agata of The New York Times on Ukrainian Soldiers and Post Traumatic Stress. I’m going to put a few excerpts above the jump, but I highly recommend you click across and read the whole thing.
The soldier cannot speak about what happened to him.
It’s been a month since “the tragedy,” as he calls it. When the subject arises, he freezes and looks at the floor. He gulps for air. He cannot say it.
His doctor, a motherly woman, speaks for him: There were four of them. They were stationed near the front line, in eastern Ukraine, and on that night they shot a Russian drone from the sky. A small victory. Then its wreckage hurtled down, hunks of ragged metal slicing into the men below. He was the only one left standing.
In the numb hours that followed, someone came to collect the others — one dead, two wounded — and he was left to hold the position alone through that freezing night and into the next day.
The soldier cannot speak about what happened to him.
It’s been a month since “the tragedy,” as he calls it. When the subject arises, he freezes and looks at the floor. He gulps for air. He cannot say it.
His doctor, a motherly woman, speaks for him: There were four of them. They were stationed near the front line, in eastern Ukraine, and on that night they shot a Russian drone from the sky. A small victory. Then its wreckage hurtled down, hunks of ragged metal slicing into the men below. He was the only one left standing.
In the numb hours that followed, someone came to collect the others — one dead, two wounded — and he was left to hold the position alone through that freezing night and into the next day.
Each war teaches us something new about trauma. In World War I, hospitals overflowed with soldiers who screamed or froze or wept, described in medical texts as “moral invalids.” By the end of World War II, a more sympathetic view had emerged, that even the hardiest soldier would suffer a psychological collapse after sufficient time in combat — somewhere, two experts from the surgeon general’s office concluded, between 200 and 240 days on average.
Russia’s war in Ukraine stands out among modern wars for its extreme violence. Its front lines are close together and barraged with heavy artillery, and rotations from the front line are infrequent. Ukraine’s forces are largely made up of men and women who, until a year ago, had no experience of combat.
“We are looking at a war that is basically a repetition of the First World War,” says Robert van Voren, who heads the Federation Global Initiative on Psychiatry, which provides mental-health support in Ukraine. “People just cannot fight anymore for psychological reasons. People are at the front line too long, and at a certain point, they crack. That’s the reality we have to deal with.”
I’ll put some of the quotes specifically from the patients and their care givers after the jump. But before we get there I think it is important to remember that war is corrosive. Even a just one in defense of one’s home, family, and fellow citizens against a brutal, genocidal re-invasion. We often celebrate the resilience and fortitude and determination and ingenuity of Ukrainians in general and the Ukrainian military in specific here in these updates. But all of that resilience, fortitude, determination, and ingenuity comes at an exceedingly high price. And that price is not just being paid now, it will be paid well into the future. We need to realize and not forget that the price being paid and the debt being accumulated to be paid later is higher than it would be because of the decisions of our, our allies, and our partners senior leaders in how to respond to the re-invasion. Our, our allies’, and our partners’ strategic choices are being paid for with Ukrainian blood and treasure.
Here is President Zelenskyy’s update from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump: