Family Members of Russian Combat Victims Need Psychological Help Too, Adding to the Burdens on Russian Society and State, ‘Vyorstka’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 23 – The number of Russians who will need psychological help as a result of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine is larger than a significant fraction of the 700,000 veterans and includes the wives, mothers, family members and even friends of the more than 200,000 Russian soldiers who have died and the even greater number of those who have been injured.

            The total of those with psychological problems as a result of the war is already overwhelming the ability of the Russian medical system to cope and is likely to swamp it entirely in the coming months if and when the war ends, Vyorstka journalist Anna Ryzkkova says (verstka.media/zheny-i-materi-pogibshih-voennyh-nuzhdayutsya-v-psihologicheskoi-pomoshhi).

            Veterans groups, sometimes with the support of the government and sometimes independently, are trying to fill the gap; but they lack the resources to do so, Ryzhkova says; and the result is untold human suffering as she recounts on the basis of interviews with family members of the direct victims of Putin’s war among Russian forces.

            Such people rarely get the attention that veterans with PTSD do; but their numbers are so large and growing that they constitute a social and ultimately political problem even greater than the military one alone, yet another example of the collateral damage that Putin and his war have inflicted on the Russian Federation.