The Broken Bodies and Minds of the Soldiers Fighting in Ukraine

All I can offer them is a peaceful night's sleep

Some of the young men are being trained on how to close their eyes again. Can you imagine? It’s not that they can’t physically close them. It’s because when they do, the mind goes wild. Berserk, even.

The explosions and the cries of fellow soldiers mixed with the smell of burning flesh and the all-consuming panic that the sky will crash down and crush them into tiny bits of nothing but shredded arms, legs, and other unrecognizable body parts evaporate the silence turning the brain’s inherent darkness into an inferno of hecklers and demons. These boys and the men just a few years shy of retirement seek psychological help from doctors, nurses, and volunteers in undisclosed locations in Ukraine.

One hugged a horse and said it is the first happiness he had felt in 18 months.

As sick and unfit as they are for a normal life, not to mention just a night’s sleep, these boys and men aren’t the victims. They aren’t yet the heroes. They are just soldiers on leave. After two weeks of being trained on how to fall asleep again, maybe even on how to regain a semblance of silence in their minds, they will be returned to the front because it is their duty to drive out the Russian invaders — the same men and boys who were sent into Ukraine by the fascist killer, Vladimir Putin.

Vladyslav Ruziev, a 28-year-old Ukrainian sergeant, has recurring nightmares about his experience being pinned down with his unit last winter, powerless to do anything about the constant Russian artillery, the bitter freeze, the comrades he saw lose arms and legs. “Sometimes the ground was so thick with the wounded that the evacuation vehicles drove over their bodies by mistake in the chaos,” he said, recalling scenes he witnessed on the front earlier this year (The Hidden Trauma of Ukraine’s Soldiers).

When the war ends

The war won’t end soon, which means that many of these victims won’t survive to the end. Since Ukraine began its counterattack a few months ago, the rate at which Ukraine’s hero defenders have been dying has increased dramatically. A report by The New York Times last week indicated that morale on the front has been declining. A sense of futility is setting in as many know that if breakthroughs are not made soon, then the winter will rapidly set in, and the war will unnoticeably enter its third year.

The war, however, will end somehow, in some way. The result might not be the one for which everyone is hoping but it will be an end to the incessant violence. It will be an end to the dying in the foxholes at the hands of boys and men who also don’t really want to be there. The death will move to the cities, villages, and homes spread out around the war-torn country.

The deaths will, somewhat ironically, become lonelier and arguably even more tragic than had life ended on the front in an instant that happened so fast and so suddenly the brain couldn’t even perceive it.

The boys, who quickly turned into men, and the men, who regrettably turned into old, broken ones, will find themselves after the war screaming into the silence of torturous nights they would swear were on fire from endless artillery barrages.

They will be staggering around village lanes so drunk that they have soiled themselves. Everything they will be doing to maintain the smallest hold on sanity will be why their deaths will happen unceremoniously and alone — not as heroes but as crushed human beings thanks to Vladimir Putin’s and Russia’s war.

Staring up night skies filled with what they only wish were rockets and drones, many of these boys and men in Ukraine and Russia will inexplicably ache to be back on the front, dying like the defenders or invaders neither of them ever wanted to be.

Maksym saw little point to the therapies in his second stint at a rehabilitation center outside Kharkiv, in the northeast. But like many soldiers, he was caught between the horrors of the front line and the feeling that it was the only place where he belonged.

“At the front, I know my task and I know my duties,” he said. “But here, I don’t know.” He added: “Maybe one day when the war here is finished, I’ll go to another combat zone somewhere else (The Hidden Trauma of Ukraine’s Soldiers).”

Many of the boys and men of Ukraine and Russia will be broken, former soldiers unable to cope with the silence of life without war. These men will find new roles as mercenaries in other people’s wars. They will become criminals, or some will join Putin’s — and the one after Putin — army of oppression.

The futures of these two countries are joined forever by a bond that no one wanted but now cannot escape. Ukrainians will be fueled by hatred for Russians, and the Russians will be fueled by ignorant indifference to that hatred. But, at least their fantasy that the whole world is against them gets revived, thanks to the Ukrainian hatred.

The men, though, the ones who have spent the past 18 months trying to kill each other, will be bonded by a fear of closing their eyes.

The hardened men can have trouble lowering their guard. For some, touch is threatening. In one group session, hypervigilant warriors struggled to comply with instructions to keep their eyes closed. One shook uncontrollably (The Hidden Trauma of Ukraine’s Soldiers).”

All of this was caused by one greedy, sick billionaire who looks like a bloated rat — Vladimir Putin.

All I can offer them is one moment, a small one, one of complete silence — and a peaceful night’s sleep.