As Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy returned to the Oval Office yesterday for talks with US president Donald Trump and European leaders, the mood in Ukraine was one of weary scepticism.
“I have no expectations from these meetings,” said Dr Bozhena Andrushchyshyn. The 28-year-old – Dr Andru for short – is a psychiatrist at First Medical Union hospital in Lviv.
“My friends feel the same way. There’s a high rate of depression, anxiety and insomnia. You don’t need to be under psychiatric treatment to feel this.”
Dr Andru cares for up to 150 civilians and about 75 soldiers. Due to time constraints, she has neglected a research project with Yale University on the physiological effects of war trauma.
RM Block
“Patients call and text me,” she said. “I must give them priority. There’s been a big influx of soldiers because of recent prisoner exchanges. Virtually all suffer from PTSD and depression.”
We sit in a hospital conference room with Captain Yulian Pylypei, age 30, who was captured during the siege of Mariupol in April, 2022, and held in prisons across Donetsk and Russia until September, 2024. He suffers from flashbacks and continues to see a psychotherapist.
The former prisoner has a shaved head and smiling eyes that belie the torture he endured almost daily. He has regained most of the 30 kilos he lost on a diet of watery porridge. There is a dent on his right temple where he was bitten by a Russian attack dog. He suffered a broken nose and a brain haemorrhage.
“Of course, we need support from Europe and the US,” Pylypei said. “But Ukraine must defend itself with or without the US. Nobody wants peace more than we do, but we cannot sign a deal which means that in a few years Russian forces continue and more people die. There must be a lot of security guarantees.”
If I had to choose between being captured again and dying, I would choose death in one second
— Captain Yulian Pylypei
None of the proposals – including Trump’s reported promise of “Article five-like guarantees”, Steve Witkoff’s claim that Russia will “enshrine in law” a promise not to attack again, and talk of a European multinational force – convince Pylypei. “All of them promised to protect us in the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, but Russia invaded us and nobody moved. We are smarter than in 1994. We must be very careful.”
Following Russian president Vladimir Putin’s cue, Trump now wants to skip the ceasefire stage and move instead to a final peace agreement. Zelenskiy wants Russian attacks to stop during negotiations. In the 24 hours from Sunday to Monday, Russia launched 140 drones and fired four missiles at Ukraine, killing 10 people, including an infant and a teenager.
Pylypei trained for 13 months with the US Marine Corps. The Russians were determined to make him confess to being a CIA agent. “I just laughed,” he says. “They were asking strange things about laboratories (Russian propaganda claimed the US ran biological and chemical warfare labs in Ukraine). I said, ‘Are you guys serious? What are you talking about?’.
“Then they wanted me to say I’d been ordered to kill civilians . . . Psychologically, it was very hard. If I had to choose between being captured again and dying, I would choose death in one second.”
Love of life, his country and his wife Khrystyna kept him alive in prison, Pylypei says. “In captivity, every day you ask, ‘How can this be happening in the 21st century, in Europe?’. You want to scream, ‘Hey world, what is wrong with you? Are you serious? We can cure cancer and we are still doing this?’.”
[ Eastern Ukraine mapped: Vladimir Putin demands territory to end Russia’s warOpens in new window ]
Dr Andru worries about her fiance, a soldier in Kramatorsk, one of the cities in eastern Ukraine which Putin says must be surrendered in exchange for peace. “It’s hard for me to be here and wait,” she says. “There is a lot of pain and sometimes you feel hopeless. I understand how my patients feel.” Attempted suicides among civilians shot up in recent months.
Several of Pylypei’s comrades tried to take their own lives in prison. “I told my guys, ‘Hey bro’, don’t give up. Everything has a beginning and an end. The only question is when. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a year or two, but it will end’.”
Except for six months in solitary confinement, Pylypei was with other Ukrainians in cramped, overcrowded cells. “I set in my mind, ‘This is your battlefield. You have to fight. You have to resist. You must exercise even if you have no strength. Push-ups. Stretching. Sit-ups. Stay ready and strong’. Every morning and every evening I told the others, ‘We are one day closer to home’. I taught them English.”
Pylypei and Andru agree that unjust suffering is the most profound cause of war trauma. Yet both claim to be optimistic.
“I am 100 per cent optimistic for the future,” says Pylypei. “Everything will be okay. Look around at this hospital, at this city, this country. After everything that happened to me, I am 100 per cent certain everything will be okay. We must defend the country and stay strong and rebuild it and save it for our children and our children’s children. That is what is going to happen.”
