Shandyba Mykyta, Ukrainian 10th Mountain Assault Brigade “Edelweiss” via AP
A foreign volunteer helping defend Ukraine, speaking from their own experiences, said that losses in this war, the largest land war in Europe since World War II and a truly catastrophic human tragedy in terms of combat losses, are unavoidable and difficult to process when they happen.
“You lose people pretty much almost every week, not necessarily always from your company, but also from like neighboring companies, just people that you know,” they told Business Insider. “In the grand scheme of things, our optempo is, I guess, quite high, so you don’t really have the time to mourn people anyway, so we just kind of go and do our thing.”
‘A lot of anger inside me’
Dr. Vladislav Matrenitsky, a Kyiv-based psychotherapist, author, and founder of the Center for Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics and Psychedelic Medicine Expio, has worked with Ukrainian veterans and observed that some patients who experience PTSD have expressed behavior like hyper-vigilance, agitation, and anxiousness.
Many soldiers are left to process the trauma from the battlefield only once they’re back home with their families, but this can put their relationships at risk if PTSD sets in and symptoms surface. This issue has long plagued soldiers returning from war.
Pierre Crom/Getty Images
Some of Ukraine’s soldiers have been serving on the front lines for long stretches as Ukraine grapples with manpower shortages. Brockdorf says this prolonged length of service can also aggravate soldiers’ feelings of exhaustion and abandonment.
As Mark Hertling, a former US Army general noted earlier this year in a discussion with CNN, staying on the battlefield for two and a half years “just takes an incredible account of fatigue, psychological damage, and the toughness of being in the trenches in the front lines will really be a morale factor.”
And, indeed, that damage can be lasting, which is why Brockdorf says it’s important to be there for Ukrainian soldiers.
“I think that’s very important for Ukrainian defenders to know: that they are not forgotten,” Brockdorf said. “When you live long enough and you only see around you bullets, drones, and dirt in those trenches, it’s hard to know that somebody out there really remembers and really fights for you.”
Ryan Pickrell contributed to this reporting.