This is a translation of an article from the Ukrainian service of the BBC. The original is available here.
The text contains sensitive details and mentions of suicides. The names of some individuals have been changed for security reasons.
“What happened, happened, and now that’s all that’s left — he was buried, and there are no answers. I don’t even know where to go, who to turn to, you understand?” she says.
Orest, her son, died in 2023 near Chasiv Yar, but not from a sniper bullet or shell — he took his own life. According to the investigation, that is indeed the case. But Kateryna has no clarity regarding the reasons and circumstances of her son's death.
Kateryna lives with the daily pain of losing her only son. However, her suffering does not end there. Under Ukrainian law, suicide is classified as a “non-combat loss,” which places the families of such servicemen at a disadvantage: they are deprived of payments, state support, and honors.
In contrast, in the USA, military suicides are considered service-related, taking into account possible combat injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Families are entitled to support and benefits, and the deceased are buried with military honors, their names immortalized on memorials.
In Ukraine, however, such mechanisms are absent. While the nation honors those who fell in battle, there exists another category of servicemen — their deaths go unnoticed and unrecognized.
“It’s as if we’ve been divided into categories,” Kateryna says. “Some died ‘correctly,’ while others died ‘incorrectly.’”
In her grief, the woman is not alone. Official statistics on suicides among servicemen in Ukraine are lacking. Authorities report isolated cases, but human rights activists and families of the deceased are convinced that there are hundreds of such cases.
We found three women whose tragedies are hidden behind the term “non-combat loss.”
Their tears are quiet, their stories whisper of pain, but their suffering is real and profound. They want to be heard and seen, for each of them has lost the most precious thing — a husband or a son, defending the country.
650 days
Every day, Kateryna writes letters to her son Orest.
“Today is the 650th day,” she says. We meet in Ivano-Frankivsk. At her request, the names of her and her son have been changed. The woman chose a rented apartment for the meeting to maintain anonymity.
She shows on her phone screen photos of Orest — a tall, light-haired young man in military uniform and glasses with sad eyes. He was 25 years old. From childhood, Orest was quiet and modest, loved to read. After school, he enrolled in the history department, dreaming of a scientific career abroad.
In January 2023, while returning from an interview, he encountered a TCC patrol (Territorial Recruitment Center). For Kateryna, that day became a turning point.
From an early age, Orest had poor eyesight: minus 7 and astigmatism. According to Kateryna, he passed all medical commissions and was declared unfit for service.
“He didn’t hide; he had a medical certificate. But he was just detained on the street. I didn’t try to dissuade him from serving. I said: he can’t see. What more do you need?” she shares.
The woman recounts that Orest was immediately sent for a medical commission, was declared fit, and was forced to sign documents. According to him, the TCC staff tore up the unfitness certificate. The TCC denies this.
Next came training, relocations to different service locations, and eventually, Orest found himself on the front lines near Chasiv Yar as a signalman. Kateryna noticed how her son changed. He became more withdrawn, his messages became short and monosyllabic.
“He became depressed. There were days when I was just tormented by anxiety, realizing that he was unwell,” she recalls.
He spoke little about his service and life on the front lines. Once he mentioned that his unit was thrown into battle without preparation. The BBC has no way to verify this information.
And then, she received a call from the TCC.
“Two people came, introduced themselves as psychologists. I didn’t immediately understand what it was about. They said he ‘died.’ Not killed, but ‘died.’ Suicide. It didn’t fit in my head,” Kateryna recalls.
She does not remember the first days after her son’s death. She says that for a while she wore his bathrobe — the only thing she didn’t wash to preserve her son’s scent. When she came to her senses, Kateryna began to study the investigation materials, and some details alarmed her.
The investigative documents state that Orest died from “self-inflicted gunshot wounds.”
“In one document, it says ‘single shot,’ and in another — ‘burst’... There were no witnesses. This happened on the second floor. They heard a shot, according to the explanations. But many testimonies look like copies of each other,” Kateryna says, fearing that Orest may have been killed or driven to suicide.
“I can’t claim that it was definitely suicide or that he was pushed to it. He found himself in unfamiliar, uncharacteristic circumstances, ripped from his usual life and placed in conditions that may have been unbearable,” she reflects.
Kateryna was shocked that she received no support from the state.
“The investigator called me a month later and asked if I had calmed down. He said there would be no payments, no prospects for me. Nothing at all,” the woman recalls.
Now her whole life is a struggle for truth and memory of her son. Kateryna is trying to achieve the resumption of the investigation: “This is about justice. You had a child, they sent him to war, gave him a gun, and then brought back a body and buried him. The state is no longer involved.”
Kateryna feels pain from the indifference of those around her and the condemnation directed at servicemen who have committed suicide and their families.
“This person went through hell. How can people here judge what he experienced there? He didn’t run away. He didn’t kill another person; he killed himself,” she says.
Her tears hinder her speech. Helplessness and fatigue weigh heavily on the shoulders of this fragile woman. She thanks us for listening to her and admits that in everyday life she cannot share her story with anyone else.
“I don’t cry in front of people. But I cry every day,” she whispers.
On the sidelines
“Rotation is needed for all the guys. Everyone is tired, exhausted. How much trouble I’ve caused — it’s terrible. If I were sitting next to you…” — I watch a video sent to me after a conversation with Marianna — the widow of another fallen serviceman.
In the video is her husband Anatoliy. His voice sounds soft, almost soothing, his eyes reflect fatigue and longing for home. He records the video against the backdrop of a village near Bakhmut. After some time, he will take his own life in the hospital after being wounded.
We meet with Marianna in her home in Brovary near Kyiv. She and Anatoliy moved from Donbas after the conflict began in 2014.
“He was a very decent person, always tried to do everything right, to not harm anyone. We lived together for 25 years,” she says, her eyes shining with warmth as she talks about her husband.
When the full-scale war began, Anatoliy immediately signed up at the TCC as a volunteer, going there six times before he was handed a summons.
“They told him: are you tired of living? Go home,” Marianna recalls. She recounts how he was determined: “I understood when he said: who else, if not me? Should my son go to the front? Who else will stand up for protection? I’ve already lived enough.”
A month after training at the range, Anatoliy was already serving as a machine gunner near Bakhmut, where fierce battles were taking place. There weren’t enough people, many fighters fell from exhaustion. Instead of a few days of rest after returning from positions, they could be sent back immediately for a mission, Marianna recounts.
Once her husband told her that nearly 50 people in their unit died in one day, and their bodies were left lying in the field. The woman noticed that Anatoliy had changed, becoming more withdrawn.
“I noticed that it was very hard for him because he was a kind person. The death of his comrades affected him deeply,” she recounts.
Things worsened when Anatoliy ended up in a hospital in Chernihiv after being wounded and having part of his arm amputated. Marianna says that he began to lose track of time, thinking he was in captivity and that someone had come for him.
One morning they spoke on the phone, but by evening he stopped answering. The next day, when Marianna went to the hospital, she was told that her husband had taken his own life. He was found in the yard.
“I believe he lost touch with reality,” Marianna says with tears. Although, according to her, Anatoliy was cheerful and had many plans — to build a house, to wait for grandchildren.
“I believe that the war broke his psyche, led him to despair and disappointment because he was very disappointed with the command and what was happening around him,” she adds.
Then began the hardest part — at the TCC, Marianna learned that her husband, as a suicide, could not be buried in the military alley and there would be no memorial ceremony in the city square.
“Of course, I started to argue, saying: wait, when he was at the front and fulfilling his duties, he was useful, and now he’s a suicide? This is his life, and he decided to manage it this way,” she says.
Marianna faces condemnation and misunderstanding every day, even among other widows of fallen servicemen.
“I see how I am judged. ‘My husband died as a defender, and yours did it himself,’” Marianna shares, her heart filled with pain and a sense of injustice.
“The country simply threw me to the sidelines. I gave my husband to defend the state, but the country took him away. I am left alone in this country. Without any help.”
According to her, the only place where she can receive support and understanding is an online group of women who have lost husbands to suicide. They are preparing a petition to revise the laws to achieve equal rights for families, just like other fallen servicemen.
“Because they didn’t do it just like that. I believe it’s the consequences of PTSD. For me, my husband is a hero. I want him to be remembered as a hero, regardless of what people say,” Marianna asserts.
“My war is not over”
“Once a priest told me that you will live with this for the rest of your life,” shares Viktoriya, recalling her husband Andriy.
To meet with us, she came from her hometown to Lviv. She didn’t even tell her son that she would be talking to journalists — he was against it, fearing that their story would be discovered and judged.
Before the interview begins, Viktoriya warns that she will cry. We agreed on this in advance.
Her Andriy went to the front as a volunteer, even though he had a congenital heart defect. He literally wore down the TCC and eventually was assigned as a driver to one of the reconnaissance units. He went through several assignments: participated in the liberation of Kherson, spent the winter near Soledar, and his brigade was the last to leave the city.
In June 2023, his unit was in the Dnipropetrovsk region when Viktoriya received a call from the TCC.
“They read me a notification that he had committed suicide. For me, it was a shock; I couldn’t understand how this could happen,” Viktoriya recounts.
“Then the real madness began,” she remembers.
“Such causes of death are now called ‘non-combat loss.’ To make it sound less harsh. I’m angry at everyone. I’m angry at the whole system,” her voice breaks. “Even if, hypothetically, he did this himself — he defended this country for a year and a half.”
Her husband’s body was brought back only after ten days. When identifying him in the morgue, Andriy was already in uniform, but Viktoriya was dissuaded from viewing the body, being told that too much time had passed. Only after the funeral, through acquaintances, did she find a lawyer who examined her husband’s case and discovered contradictions.
Thanks to the lawyer, Viktoriya gained access to photographs from the investigation, and she also had doubts: “I said I didn’t believe what happened. Judging by the photos from the scene, I’m not an expert, but it was clear that the body had been moved.”
Viktoriya regrets that at the very beginning she accepted the investigation’s version. “I probably believed that everything would be investigated properly,” she says. But after she had doubts about whether her husband could have been killed, she pushed for the investigation to be resumed through the military prosecutor's office.
The lawyer warned her that this path would be long and difficult, but Viktoriya is not going to back down. I ask her what this struggle means to her.
“I’m not fighting for money. I’m fighting for my husband’s name. I have to see this through to the end. Because he can no longer stand up for himself,” she explains with quiet determination. “My war is not over.”
Unfortunately, there are very few like her to change the system.
God, the state, people
The stories of Kateryna, Marianna, and Viktoriya are typical. Their pain and struggle for truth reflect a broader, systemic problem that military personnel, human rights activists, and advocates speak about.
“In war, everyone believes in God. Not everyone is religious, but everyone hopes for higher justice,” says military chaplain Borys Kutovyi.
We meet with him in one of the churches in Dnipro. He often communicates with servicemen on the front lines and knows how close they come to death. Chaplains often become the first people soldiers talk to, even before psychologists: “The priest enjoys great trust. He can support differently and knows a lot about the inner state of soldiers,” he says, noting that military personnel are more susceptible to mental disorders and suicides than civilians.
“A person with a weapon is in a high-risk group,” he explains, especially concerning mobilized individuals, who are often less prepared for stress than career military personnel and may have mental disorders not detected during medical commissions.
In his sector of work, at least three cases of military suicides have been recorded during the full-scale war. This indicates a deep spiritual and psychological crisis that the system is unable to detect and prevent in time.
“For me, even one suicide is too many. A human life is priceless. Even one case indicates that we are not doing enough, that we are not working as we should,” he emphasizes.
The tragedy of families who have lost loved ones to suicide also has a social dimension.
“We all suffer from grief, but for those who lost a loved one to suicide, the burden is even heavier,” says Oksana Borkun, founder of the widows’ community “Mayemo zhyty” (Ukrainian for “We must live”).
We meet at the alley of glory in Irpin, where portraits of the fallen hang among flowers and candles. Oksana is also a widow; three years ago, her fiancé died at the front. Since then, she has been advocating for the rights of families of the deceased and defending their interests.
According to her, the wives of servicemen who likely committed suicide face enormous condemnation.
“If someone committed suicide, it means he is not a hero. In some places, they refuse to perform the funeral rites, in others — to display photographs on the memorial alley,” she recounts. It is even more painful that the law deprives families of state support, leaving them to fend for themselves.
“These are military people who are on duty. They are not civilians who can sleep peacefully at home, spend time with their families. These are people under constant stress,” Oksana explains.
In their online community of widows, there is a chat for non-combat losses, where there are currently about 200 families. Most of them doubt that their loved ones committed suicide, Oksana says. She recalls a case where relatives were forbidden to open the coffin, but upon insistence, discovered that the body was “blue from beatings.” Such families are forced to seek the truth themselves, hire lawyers, and open investigations. The community led by Oksana fights for the rights of these women, prepares petitions, and tries to draw attention to this taboo topic.
Military ombudsman Olha Reshetylova agrees that support for families of servicemen who likely committed suicide is insufficient. She notes that statistically, the number of suicides among military personnel has not yet exceeded the level in society as a whole.
“At a minimum, I learn about such cases two or three times a month,” Reshetylova says. But with each year of war, these risks are growing.
“We have been in the active phase of the conflict for four years now. People are exhausted. They have seen hell. Sometimes they are in that hell for months. And it is clear that even the strongest psyche may not withstand,” she notes.
The ombudsman emphasizes that the war continues, and in the future, such cases may become more frequent, and this needs to be addressed.
The primary task, in her opinion, is prevention.
On paper, the psychological support system for military personnel looks good; each unit should have a deputy for psychological support. But in practice, the positions are only partially filled, and specialists lack training because it takes time to form a military psychology school. Often, military chaplains fill this niche, but there are only half the necessary number in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, according to Reshetylova.
The next step is the family's right to the truth, she continues.
“Families do not know the truth about what happened and do not trust anyone,” the ombudsman explains.
“Of all known cases, there are those where suicide conceals murder. When there are no representatives of command and law enforcement at the contact line, anything can happen,” Reshetylova clarifies.
If commanders immediately lean towards the version of suicide, the investigation is often tailored to fit this hypothesis, which primarily harms families, leaving them with a stigma and without answers.
“Especially in small communities, suicide is considered a disgrace,” Reshetylova says.
Therefore, the ombudsman’s team is working on changing practices: mandatory photo and video documentation from the scene of a possible suicide is being introduced, and the term “committing suicide” is being replaced with a more neutral one to avoid bias in the investigation.
Nevertheless, in her opinion, when it comes to compensations and honors for the memory of the deceased, an individual approach is necessary. After all, as Reshetylova believes, there is a difference between the suicide of a recruit and that of a soldier who has undergone a long combat path.
“This person gave up his mental health defending the state,” emphasizes Olha Reshetylova. Therefore, such families deserve support, and the military deserves due respect.
Military chaplain Borys Kutovyi and widow rights advocate Oksana Borkun disagree with this. In their opinion, suicide is a consequence of war, and all such servicemen should receive appropriate honors, and their families should receive compensations.
Despite the disagreements, all interlocutors agree that suicides among military personnel are not private tragedies but manifestations of systemic problems that society must address together with the state.
The most challenging challenge for Ukraine will be the period after the war when many servicemen return home.
Psychologist and military journalist Sebastian Junger said that modern veterans are ready to give their lives for their country but do not know how to live after the war. Therefore, society and state structures need to prepare for their return now, emphasizes Olha Reshetylova.
“All of society must understand that those who were your neighbors, partners, or colleagues three or four years ago have gone through a different path. The warmer we welcome them, the fewer tragedies, suicides, drug addiction, and alcoholism there will be,” she concludes.
The preparation of this material also involved Kevin MacGregor and Oleksiy Nazaruk. The author of the illustrations is Maggeram Zeynalov.
