WASHINGTON — The iconic domed Capitol Building, home to the U.S Congress, this week was the venue for an event marking the anniversary of the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea, the prelude to a continuing war of aggression waged by Moscow in eastern Ukraine.
The March 11 event focused on Ukraine’s military veterans who sustained serious injuries as they defended their country against Russian regular units and “separatist forces,” created, paid and controlled by Moscow, in the industrialized Donbas area of Ukraine.
Almost 5,000 members of Ukraine’s military have been killed in the war and many more have been wounded. Some received serious physical injuries which have caused paralysis or required amputations. Many others have suffered psychological scars from stress with a great number developing full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder, known as PTSD.
A panel of speakers with firsthand knowledge of the physical and psychological effects of frontline service spoke about various aspects of those after-effects in a briefing entitled “Heroes of liberty—enhancing well being, resilience, and civic engagement of Ukrainian veterans.”
The event was the initiative of Olia Onyshko, a Ukrainian activist, artist and acclaimed film documentary maker who lives near the American capital. Onyshko teamed up with the largest Ukrainian organization in the U.S., the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA); a well-known community-minded fund, the Pylyshenko Family Foundation; the Ukrainian-American Community Foundation at the Ukrainian Federal Credit Union and the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee.
Onyshko told the Kyiv Post that one of the motives for holding the event was to counter Russian propaganda that has devoted enormous resources to disinformation and propaganda efforts to portray the Ukrainian government as fascists or American puppets and paint the military as monsters.
“We wanted an audience right at the center of U.S. democracy in Congress to see for themselves and listen to some of the wonderful people fighting not just for Ukrainian democracy and freedom but for that of America and the rest of the world too,” she said.
The speakers were introduced by Michael Sawkiw who is UCCA’s executive vice president and director of its publicity arm in Washington. He said: “The war started almost six years ago by Russia is not just a historical conflict, it is a war that is happening today.” He said that only on the previous day, March 10, pro-Russian forces had killed two Ukrainian soldiers and injured another nine.
Ukrainian Ambassador to Ukraine Volodymyr Yelchenko greets U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the co-chair of the Ukrainian Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, on March 11, 2020, in Washington, D.C.
The co-chair of the Ukrainian Caucus in the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, was the first speaker and called the conflict “a war not only against Ukraine but against democracy and Europe itself. Ukraine is the skirmish line for liberty in Europe in our modern era.”
She said that Russia was trying to undermine Western institutions such as NATO and other vital components of democracy and “Ukrainian military service members are not only protecting Ukraine’s territory and sovereignty but also our allies in Europe and democracy around the world.”
Kaptur said that the war did not end for Ukrainians merely because they left the battlefields. Just as for U.S. participants of conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the effects of war followed them far from the front lines.
She said: “Ukrainian veterans can face difficulty reintegrating into society; they have been on high alert and they have seen what most of humanity will not. They often struggle to overcome both physical and invisible wounds including the effects of post-traumatic stress and many neurological conditions.” She noted many could not find employment, which she said was critical to overall wellbeing, and that more than 1,000 veterans had committed suicide.
Four of the panel members served or are still serving in the Ukrainian military and appeared in their uniforms: Oleksandr Tereschenko, who until the government was dissolved recently, had been Ukraine’s deputy minister for veterans, and Yana Zinkevych, now 24 years old and a member of her country’s parliament. She joined volunteers fighting the Russian forces in 2014 when she was just 18.
Tereschenko took part in the defense of Donetsk Airport in 2014 – a battle that acquired the aura of a legend as Ukrainian fighters held out for months against overwhelming Russian forces and demonstrated to their countrymen, at one of the grimmest and most hopeless periods of the war, that Ukrainian spirit and determination were more than a match for Moscow’s brute strength.
He said that during the six years of direct conflict and hybrid war waged by Moscow, 383,000 Ukrainian men and women had served, around 4,700 had died and some 13,000 had been injured severely and were now disabled veterans.
“More than 500 of the injured had to have limbs amputated,” said Tereschenko, “And one of those you see before you.”
He lost both hands. As he speaks, he uses a hook-like prosthetic which replaced his left hand, to occasionally stroke away an itch on a face scarred by enemy action.
He said that those dealing with Ukrainian veterans had come to understand that although circumstances in various countries, including America, Canada, and Britain – whose militaries have been most closely involved in training Ukrainian forces – varied enormously, the problems faced by combatants were identical.
Those he listed as “lack of trust in government, no place to live, poor employment prospects, shortfalls in medical assistance for physical and psychological rehabilitation and social integration and much more.”
But Tereschenko said that veterans, with their pronounced sense of duty and an instinct for truth, were a great asset to their country.
He said: “In 2014 I was sitting atop a BTR [armored vehicle] heading into a village in the war zone. The people we passed were gazing at us as with expressions that showed we were their last hope and I understood that I was responsible for their fate. That feeling has remained with me and I believe most veterans feel that responsibility too.
“Therefore, I believe that the task of government and the ministry for veterans is to enable the veterans to become an overwhelming advantage and asset for society, not a burden.”
From the U.S. he said his ministry had learned the value of enabling veterans themselves to create and run centers to provide rehabilitation and support for one another. He talked about the importance of addressing the psychological effects of war on service members, including PTSD, and spotlighted the immense benefits of sport in healing and returning confidence to wounded warriors.
Alluding to one of the important reasons voiced by event organizer, Onyshko, for holding the briefing, Tereschenko said Kremlin disinformation and attempts to discredit its military and other symbols of Ukraine’s nationhood also take a toll on veterans and international support is required to fight that psychological aspect of the hybrid conflict.
“The war in Ukraine continues,” he said, “The ministry of veteran affairs will continue to formulate policy on the basis that the majority of veterans are an invaluable reserve that has the ability physically and in terms of morale to strike back if the enemy tomorrow decides to launch a widespread attack. I’m prepared for this myself.”
Zinkevych, also in uniform and sitting in a wheelchair, said that soon after joining the ranks of those fighting to stem the Russian invasion, she saw how feeble the medical services were at the front lines and how soldiers were dying because of a lack of medical care to keep the wounded alive during the critical period between their removal from the battlefield and being transported to hospital facilities.
Before the war, Zinkevych had intended to study medicine but as the conflict raged around her, she decided to act immediately. She founded and is the commander of a tactical medicine group providing frontline care, which swiftly expanded from a platoon to, in 2015, the battalion-sized unit called the “Hospitaliers.”
The Hospitaliers are overwhelmingly funded by private donors, large and small, and operates as an NGO, to a large extent unfettered by government red tape. It has gained a reputation for performing its functions efficiently and is credited with saving hundreds of lives.
Zinkevych became a member of the Ukrainian parliament in 2019. She said: “I strongly believe there is no war between Ukraine and Russia. There is a war between good and evil; between democracy and dictatorship; between normal conditions for living and poverty.”
Zinkevych believes that all of Russia’s neighbors are potential victims of the same sort of aggression that befell Ukraine and it is important for them to share experiences with and learn from the West.
She said that despite Moscow’s efforts, Ukraine was fighting to join the ranks of “civilized countries” and notwithstanding the thousands of miles that separate Ukraine from the U.S. “our country’s values become ever-closer to those of America and the West.
“The only course Ukraine can head along,” she said, “is toward victory.”
Two military chaplains, Bishop Stefan Sus of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and Fathers Sviatoslav Yurkiv of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, also spoke, sporting military badges on their clerical attire.
Sus has been a military chaplain since 2006 but was only consecrated a bishop earlier this year and he learned of his coming appoint while running the U.S. Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C. last autumn, accompanying Ukrainian wounded warriors who have become a regular fixture at the world-renowned event over the past four years.
Sus said that the work of chaplains involved not only ministering to soldiers at the front lines but to their families whose welfare both occupied the soldiers’ thoughts but also provided the vital support that kept them going.
He said they had identified distinct categories of people to work with among military families: those who had lost relatives to the war; those with family members missing in the conflict zone – perhaps in captivity but with their fate unknown; families with seriously-injured relatives, some of whom have undergone amputation and need care and rehabilitation; families with victims of mentally illness or serious psychological stress; families of military personnel who have been displaced from their home areas, especially in the [Russian-occupied] Donbas conflict zone.
“A veteran is a soldier who carries the wounds of fighting within himself, the injuries he has suffered in the war have also made a deep imprint on those who love him – family, parents, wife, and children,” said Sus.
“It is important to understand the inner state of the soldier and to help the soldier accept their family as an environment where they will feel good and can be healed.”
Yurkiv has since July 2018 been the chaplain at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center at Yavoriv in western Ukraine where personnel from the forces of America, Canada, the U.K, and other allies, provide advanced training to Ukrainian fighters.
He was a student at the Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy when the demonstrations which began in late 2013 against Ukraine’s then pro-Moscow president became violent after brutal attacks by security services against peaceful protesters.
Yurkiv was one of those who gave sanctuary and medical assistance when the St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, in the heart of the Ukrainian capital, opened its doors to victims of the beatings. In late 2014 he was ordained a priest in that same place of worship.
He said: “With the Maidan came calls for better, more democratic government but Russia responded by invading Crimea and starting the war in Eastern Ukraine. Together with volunteer fighters priests became chaplains and moved to the war zone in Donbas.
“The chaplaincy became a powerful movement that organized aid for the fighters, collected money for uniforms, military equipment and ammunition for those who went from their towns or villages to war.”
He said that during the course of the war more than 5000 clerics of various confessions have volunteered to work in the front lines.
“Most importantly chaplains visited combat areas to support the defenders, pray together and show that they were not alone,” said Yurkiv.
But he said that there are not enough resources or funds to provide all the help needed by physically and psychologically injured service people and their families.
The psychological effects of the war, he said, are only increasing and these include PTSD, alcoholism, broken families, suicides. “The war is sure to end and all fighters will become veterans. We already have too many cases where veterans have not received help …….. There are not enough services to go around……..Unless they get help this war will not end for them even though they are no longer at the front. This must change.”
Yurkiv said that shortly before leaving to come to the U.S he asked a soldier newly returned from the front lines what sort of assistance they needed and, after a long pause, received the following reply: “We need to be remembered, not abandoned.”
Yurkiv said: “The church will continue to be with its people, the chaplains will continue to be side by side with our defenders, they will be with them when they leave and where they are deployed because we are stronger together.” Gesturing at the audience, he added: “Dear American friends, we can be stronger with your help.”
Other speakers also focused on the need for greater efforts to heal the psychological wounds from war including PTSD and the importance of enlisting the experience of other countries, particularly America, in that task.
Among the other speakers were Marta Pyvovarenko a mental health expert from the NGO “Development Foundations” and her colleagues Vitaliy Harechko and Katja Kolcio, an associate professor from Wesleyan University in the U.S.
Christi Anne Hofland, a senior member of the IREX global development and education organization, spoke about a new $5 million program to help Ukrainian veterans get improved services and promote their reintegration into the workforce.
Ukrainian-American Roman Fontana who served in the U.S services and Darren Holowka, a Canadian-Ukrainian doctor who served in the Canadian armed forces also spoke about efforts from the diasporas in their countries to help members of the military, current and former, in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S. Volodymyr Yelchenko, attended the event. He said more than 14,000 people have died so far in the conflict, with another 27,000 wounded. Some two million people, he said, had been forced to flee their homes and seven percent of Ukraine’s territory remains under Russian occupation.
He said that the current ceasefire is the 2oth with Moscow’s forces breaching the previous 19 and “there have been more casualties so far this year than during the same period last year.”
Yelchenko said that earlier this month a soldier who had been born in 1991 – the year Ukraine gained independence – became the sixth service member killed in action this March.
In the evening the ambassador hosted a roundtable event at the Ukrainian embassy which featured some of the speakers from earlier in the day and the opening of an exhibit entitled “Defending Liberty,” an installation created by Onyshko and an American collaborator, Chris Chernow, comprising hundreds of rifle cartridges suspended on wires from a chain-link fence with camouflage netting to denote the war zone.
