A new battle for Ukrainian soldiers: reintegrating into civilian life

Stanislav was an installer of refrigerators, neon signs and other promotional elements for Pepsi in bars and supermarkets in Ukraine. This was before Russia began the full-scale invasion against his country in February 2022. He showed up to fight and did so until early 2023, at the Battle of Soledar, in the east of the country, he was seriously injured. injured. His arm is now a flap. They didn't amputate it, but he can't move it anymore. His torso and back are scarred by shrapnel.

In his first contact with Stanislav, in November 2023, on a night train, the now ex-soldier was traveling to kyiv to undergo surgery for the third time. He was blackout drunk. During the night he did not sleep, plagued by nightmares and insomnia. He smoked incessantly and didn't care that it was forbidden to do so in the carriage. Nobody reproached him. Stanislav, 34, lived with his mother in a village in Zaporizhzhia province. She called his cell phone every two hours, worried. When he got up in the morning, more serene, he admitted that he did not see it possible to rebuild his life, nor to have a job again: the disability benefit and his mother were the only things that would support him.

Stanislav is one of the tens of thousands of soldiers who have been discharged from the army in the more than two years of war, the vast majority crippled. Oleg Gorobets, a former military man, estimates that there are around 100,000. The Ministry of Defense does not provide official data. Gorobets is a former combatant in the war in Donbas against pro-Russian separatists, which began in 2014. From his experience, his own and that of other veterans with whom he works, he talks about what awaits them, when they return to civilian life, to the more than 2.5 million people who will have defended their country after the current war.

“100,000 people have already returned and little is being done. And when more return, crime, family violence, alcoholism will grow… The problem will be big,” says Gorobets. The Dutch expert Robert van Voren, advisor to the Ukrainian Government, recalled a year ago in an interview with EL PAÍS that in the United Kingdom, 17% of army veterans receive prison sentences. “What we face [en Ucrania] It is of unimaginable proportions, and the country is not prepared,” Van Voren added.

Ukraine has a Ministry of Veterans Affairs which offers vocational training programs, medical assistance, granting of land or loans and mortgages under advantageous conditions. But for the majority of those interviewed in this article, this aid is insufficient.

Gorobets created Demetra together with his partner Tarás Leliuj – who is serving in the army – an agricultural company in the city of Poltava. They started with four hectares granted by the Government, for having been soldiers, and now they have 500. They employ four ex-combatants and he admits that it is not easy: “For them it is important to have a job because when they are at home they eat their brains out.” One of his employees suffers from alcoholism and must be helped. “They don't have time to readapt,” reflects Gorobets. “Two months of psychological support are necessary, but in Ukraine we do not have this; They jump directly from war to civilian life.”

Mistrust between civilians and military

The estimate of 2.5 million combatants was provided by Serhiy Pozniak on March 14 in an interview in the Ukrainian media VN. Pozniak, president of the Ukrainian Association of Veteran Businessmen, participated in a round table organized by another media in February, LB. The figure does not include Ukrainians fighting on the Russian side. The population in free Ukraine is 35 million inhabitants. At the meeting it was indicated that by 2024 it is expected that 200,000 soldiers will be demobilized and return to civilian life. There are nearly 900,000 men and women – these represent 5% of the total – who are serving in the country's defense, to which no less than 300,000 replacements will be added this year.

“I think Ukraine is not prepared to reintegrate so many men who will return from the front,” says Alexander Shilin, owner of Eco Waste, a Kharkiv company dedicated to collecting scrap metal and other material for recycling. Shilin was injured in 2023 by a drone bomb. Since then he has had reduced mobility. In the car he has his crutch and a mat to do rehabilitation exercises. This 43-year-old man criticizes the Ukrainian authorities for what he considers excessive difficulties in reintegrating into civilian life. And he gives his own example to him: despite his obvious disability, he has not yet been able to go into the reserve and continues to serve in the Territorial Defense Forces, although he does not do so in combat operations.

The main problem, says Shilin, is that “distrust” between the civilian population and the military is growing: “When the war started there was unity between the population and the army, but the distance between them grows and grows. The demobilization of troops worries civilians because they do not see that there is sufficient support for the soldiers.”

Order fulfillment

Shilin had been a bricklayer, truck driver and now owns his company. It is the paradigm of a statistic provided in 2023 by the Veterans Foundation, an institution linked to the Government: a 70% of those who return from war would like to create their own business. “When you show up in the army it is to fight for freedom, but there you have no freedom. The soldier ends up tired of following orders, and when he returns to civilian life it is more difficult for him to accept orders,” explains Igor Iashch
enko, a businessman from Poltava who was demobilized last fall after fighting in assault forces and intelligence units.

Iashchenko launched his company, Family Ministry, in December 2023. It is a small shopping and leisure space for families, financed with the investment of organizations that help military personnel start a new working life. The Veterans Foundation indicates that 77% of ex-combatants have the main fear of not finding employment. The second concern, for 72%, is falling into alcohol and drugs. The interviewees indicate the pros and cons of hiring former soldiers: the advantages are, above all, tax breaks and two months of salary paid by the State; The disadvantages are that the ex-military member has the right to reduced working hours, more vacation days and a year of leave.

Ruslan Agibalov, representative of the Kharkiv War Veterans Association, responsible for assisting invalids, offers another drawback of having a wage-earning ex-combatant: “A veteran can be dangerous at first, he can be aggressive and has a hard time accepting opinions that are not the ones he wants.” Agibalov assures that banks are reluctant to give loans to former soldiers because they consider them to be more unstable. “People who have had combat experience have a broader perspective of what is important in life, which is why it is more difficult for them to work for someone who has not gone through the same thing,” adds Yuri Danilenko, president of the Veterans Association. from Kharkiv.

Gorobets assures that it is easy to obtain state loans for retired soldiers, but few request them due to lack of training or because they distrust the Government. Going through the army has only one good thing, those interviewed agree, and that is that it gives discipline and self-confidence. Having a good commander is key, Iashchenko points out, to face military service with conviction and return mentally stable to civilian life.

Better than 2015

Oleksander Markov is 53 years old, but he looks 10 younger. This doctor, a former neurosurgeon, stocky, thick beard, short hair, has had his own rehabilitation clinic in Kharkiv for two years. He has acquired some of his equipment thanks to funding programs from the Veterans Foundation, including the fireproof covers that cover the devices. His clinic is located in the center of the city, in an area that is periodically bombed.

Most of its customers are civilians, but it also serves the military through an army discount plan. He has been a doctor on the front, in the war in Donbas and in 2022, and understands that for a veteran it is “psychologically logical that they want to be their own boss”: “They do not want to be under anyone's control after the experience they have had , although many will not be able to have their business due to the effects of post-traumatic stress.”

Markov claims that Ukraine is much better prepared than in the war in Donbas to reintegrate troops into civilian life: “In 2022, when I returned to the front, I was surprised how the level of assistance had improved. The army was much worse in 2015, you saw a lot of demoralization, alcoholism, drugs and heart attacks at the front.”

The demobilized return angry to civilian life, this doctor concedes, with the people around them who did not sacrifice like them. But with good therapeutic support, in a week you can see an improvement. He remembers the case of a young man he treated. He was traumatized after being wounded and hiding in a trench for 24 hours, surrounded by the corpses of his colleagues: in two weeks of psychological and physical therapy, he was already smiling again.

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