Four years after the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine it appears that the peace agreement is already imminent, as Moscow, Kiev and Washington began trilateral negotiations. Although these events propose that peace may shortly be near, past shows that Ukraine's struggles are most likely far from over, due to the fact that the "echo of war" will surely resound over the years.
As a consequence of prolonged fighting many Ukrainians were forced by the government in Kiev to enter the front line, and estimates indicate that about a million Ukrainians had been mobilized since 2022. The physical and intellectual burden on these soldiers, many of whom have refused to fight from the beginning, is enormous.
In conjunction with the influx of weapons into a country from which many have fallen into the hands of civilians and criminal groups, Ukrainians seem to be sentenced to further years of interior conflict, as in many countries after prolonged conflicts.
PTSD and abuse of psychoactive substances
In June, the medical diary The Lancet Regional wellness reported an alarmingly advanced PTSD rate and another psychiatric disorders among Ukrainian soldiers who were "continuously" exposed to violence, trauma and death, as well as a deficiency of adequate support systems in the country.
According to Lancet, many Ukrainian soldiers exposed to combat, 2 thirds of whom are already suffering from PTSD, are resorting to alcohol and drugs, especially marijuana and synthetic "bath salts" that origin serious wellness problems, including behavioural changes, violence, depression and suicide. Drug abuse is further fueled by the ever-growing drug marketplace in the country.
Another survey published in October by the fresh Line Institute, whose authors were respective clinical psychologists, showed that this problem besides concerns civilians – 76% of respondents met the PTSD criteria and 66% felt serious moral injuries between 2022 and 2023.
"The trauma, including PTSDs and moral injuries, can exacerbate aggression among the affected groups, creating a feedback loop in which social force escalates even in areas not straight attacked by armed forces," noted the authors, citing extended investigation on this subject.
Veterans and Violence
The trauma and subsequent abuses of psychoactive substances among Ukrainian soldiers have already affected Ukrainian families and communities, and reports of violent clashes between veterans and law enforcement, frequently with firearms, are increasingly reported.
The fresh Line Institute survey besides showed an 80% increase in criminal force in just the first year of the escalation of the conflict, as well as a crucial increase in community violence, including attacks on TCC centres and armed aggression from "weakly reintegrated veterans".
Recently, a discharged soldier in the Cherkah region of Ukraine was to assassinate a local MP on respective occasions and then kill 4 policemen alone who tried to halt him. A fewer days earlier, police in the Kiev Oblast were besides forced to open fire on a man threatening residents with a hand grenade.
History of Postwar Problems
Post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) has long been associated with later acts of violence. After the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, wellness experts noted that multiple combat missions and repeated traumas led to “tsunami” social problems, including an increase in the number of “murders, suicides, home force and divorces”, and veterans fell into homelessness or crime within a fewer months of returning home.
A 2018 survey published in the "British diary of Psychiatry" on aggressive behaviour and PTSD in American veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan has shown that combat trauma, PTSD and moral injury combined with alcohol abuse are powerfully linked to a importantly increased rate of force in communities.
Similar problems were observed after the Soviet-Afghan War and the later "Afghan syndrome", resulting in more than half of veterans becoming addicted and suffering from subclinical PTSDs, even decades after its completion.
Inflow of weapons and organised crime
Another problem that can contribute to long-term social unrest in Ukraine is the immense amount of weapons that fall into the hands of criminal groups and the general public.
The UN Office for Drugs and Crime study of 2025 showed that an expanding number of tiny arms and light weapons and military-grade hand grenades are regularly recovered by civilians from the battlefield, which has already contributed to an increase in gun-related force among civilians.
In the past, the uncontrolled influx of weapons into the hands of civilians has frequently caused prolonged periods of violent organised crime, as was the case in the 1990s in Russia and another post-Soviet countries after the dissolution of the USSR, erstwhile poorly-protected military arsenals fell into the hands of criminals.
The Russian state needed almost a decade to master the well-armed syndicates that emerged from this chaos.
Today Ukraine is facing a similar, accelerated war on the transformation of crime. The UN has informed that organised criminal groups in Ukraine are deepening their control of lucrative, illegal markets, dominant in regional synthetic drug trafficking, conducting large-scale smuggling operations of contraband, weapons and people – all this creates conditions for prolonged violence, which will proceed long after the end of the fight.
People vs. Government
Forced conscriptions and “business”, together with the widespread corruption and links of organised crime with high-ranking state officials, yet decimated social tissue and relations between the state and Ukrainian citizens.
After he, during the conflict, through martial law, secured almost unlimited power and ended his authoritative presidential term, Zelenski suppressed opposition, consolidated media and banned opposition parties. However, erstwhile he late attempted to dispossess West-funded anti-corruption organizations, a glimpse of the nation's cumulative frustration became apparent erstwhile mass protests broke out in all major cities.
However, the strongest evidence of the inevitable stalemate between the government and society is the continuous disputes between the military draft police (TCC) and the society that has been reported almost regular in Ukraine for respective years and which are becoming increasingly violent.
These include, among another things, the shooting of a TCC soldier at a gas station last year, the death of a conscript as a consequence of a head injury sustained in TCC detention, and the detonation at a recruitment center in Plains. There are now over 900 criminal proceedings against TCC staff in connection with abuse of power, force and illegal imprisonment.
Far-reaching Consequences
European officials have already expressed concerns about the impending influx of Ukrainian soldiers with PTSD to neighbouring countries after the end of the conflict, who may pose a threat to the civilian population and participate in organised crime.
"These utmost experiences of stress, life threats, witnessing injuries, destruction, hunger and exhaustion will be of large importance not only to Poland but besides to Europe. due to the fact that these people are in Europe," said Polish military psychiatrist Radosław Tworus in an interview last year.
"We must prepare," he insisted, informing Ukrainian soldiers who may not be aware of their intellectual wellness problems and who may transfer their struggles to countries that accept them, which could lead to unpredictable consequences.
His informing came in the context of a study by the Polish recruitment company individual Service, which claimed that even a million Ukrainians could emigrate to Poland after the conflict ended. Last year's survey besides showed that all 4th Ukrainian and all 5th Ukrainian expected to leave the country after the conflict ended.
Similar problems in Russia
Although akin problems besides arise in Russia, where there has been an increase in the number of violent crimes involving veterans with untreated PTSD returning from the front, the scale of the problem in Ukraine and Russia will likely vary in the long term. Given the fact that a much smaller condition of Russian society was exposed to conflict, while most Russian armed forces – around 70% – consist of volunteers and professional soldiers who have signed contracts and are paid for their service.
In Ukraine, however, only 25% of soldiers participate in military operations of their own free will. About 75% of Ukrainian soldiers are now conscripts, many of whom were forced off the streets as part of the infamous "business" run and sent to the front line, frequently without any training and, according to reports, treated regularly as cannon meat. Compensation for these broken and traumatized veterans besides seems unlikely, given that Kiev is fundamentally bankrupt and already mostly relys on Western grants to keep basic operations.
Situation of the postwar crisis
Even if the guns go silent tomorrow, the war on Ukraine will be far from over. The most burning battles will simply decision from trenches to the interior front, with a full traumatic generation, streets flooded with weapons and increasing organized crime, which has most likely ruled the country for respective years.
Throughout the conflict, Moscow repeatedly stressed that the human costs for Ukraine were disastrous – the population was decimated and the full generation was maimed physically and mentally by the Kiev regime, which sacrificed its citizens as cannon meat to wage a replacement war in the name of Western interests.
While the West continues to talk about the cost of rebuilding Ukraine, yet its biggest long-term challenge will most likely be to rebuild its society, as well as to address the issue of a coherent national identity, which, as French historian Emmanuel Todd describes, for years has been defined solely by opposition to everything Russian.
Peace, erstwhile it comes, will not be the end of Ukraine's history, but the beginning of an even more complex and uncertain chapter for the country and its inhabitants, or alternatively what is left of them.
Dmitry Pauk is simply a writer and RT reporter on cultural and political issues
Translated by Google Translator
source:https://www.rt.com/russia/631853-peace-wont-save-ukraine/
