„Einige starben auf die ‚richtige‘ Art, andere auf die ‚falsche‘ Art“: Selbstmorde in der ukrainischen Armee, über die verschwiegen wird

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This material contains sensitive details and references to suicide. Some names have been changed for security reasons.

“You see, when they say ‘he did it himself,’ it just (makes me shudder — Ed.)… He didn’t do it at home on a couch,” Kateryna’s voice trembles with indignation. Fragile, bird-like, she still cannot speak about her son Orest without tears. He died at the front near Chasiv Yar in 2023, but not from a sniper’s bullet, an artillery shell, or a drone drop — he killed himself. With an assault rifle. At least, that is what the investigation claims. But all this time Kateryna has had no answer to the question of why and under what circumstances her son died.

“So it turns out that it happened and that’s it — they just buried him and that was all. I don’t even know where to go or which doors to knock on, you understand?” she says. Kateryna’s life is daily pain from the loss of her only son, but she was forced to face an even greater challenge.

Under Ukrainian law, suicide is considered a “non-combat loss,” and as a result, the families of such servicemen effectively end up in the shadows: without death benefits, without state support, and without proper commemoration.

For comparison, in the United States, military suicides are treated as service-related. It is acknowledged there that combat trauma, stress, or PTSD can lead to this. Families are entitled to assistance and benefits, the deceased are buried with military honors, and their names may be engraved on national memorials.

In Ukraine, none of this is provided for. And while the entire country honors those killed in battle, there exists another category of servicemen — whose deaths remain effectively invisible and unrecognized.

“It’s like they divided all of us,” Kateryna explains. “Because some died the right way, and others the wrong way.”

And in her grief, the woman is not alone. There are no exact statistics on the number of suicides among servicemen in Ukraine. The authorities say these are rather isolated cases. However, human rights defenders and families of the dead emphasize that there may be hundreds of such deaths.

We managed to find three women whose personal tragedies are hidden behind the phrase “non-combat loss.” Their tears are quiet, their stories are told in whispers, but their grief is real and searing. And above all, they want to be heard and noticed, because each of them gave the most precious thing they had — a husband or a son — to defend the country.

**650 days without a son**

Kateryna writes letters to her son Orest every day. “Today is the 650th day,” she says. We meet her in Ivano-Frankivsk. At her request, we changed both her name and her son’s.

The woman agreed to meet in a rented apartment — so that none of her neighbors or acquaintances could recognize her. She shows photos of Orest on her phone — a tall, fair-haired young man in uniform and glasses looks back at us, with deep, somewhat sad eyes.

He was 25 years old. He grew up a quiet and gentle child. He loved spending time at home with books. After school, he enrolled in the history faculty and dreamed that one day he would be able to continue an academic career abroad.

In January 2023, Orest was returning home from a job interview. On the way, he encountered a TCC patrol. Kateryna says that this was the day that turned her life upside down.

From birth, the young man had very poor eyesight — +7 with astigmatism. According to Kateryna, her son passed all medical commissions and was registered for military service as unfit.

“He wasn’t hiding, he was on their records. That is, they didn’t send him a summons to his home. They caught him on the street, just caught him. ‘I didn’t set myself the goal of getting him out of the army. I said: the person can’t see. What else needs to be done?’” she says. The woman recounts to us what her son told her: he was immediately sent to the MMC, declared fit, and forced to sign some papers. She claims that, according to the young man himself, TCC representatives tore up his previous certificate of unfitness. The TCC denied this.

Then there was the training range, transfers from one place of service to another — and eventually positions near Chasiv Yar, where Orest served as a signalman. Kateryna says she saw how her son changed. Quiet and introverted, he became even more withdrawn; messages from him were short and monosyllabic.

“He began to fall into some kind of depressive state. There were several days when I was simply suffering. Because I understood that he was not well,” Kateryna recalls. Her son spoke little about his service and living conditions at the front, only once mentioning that he had witnessed how a whole bunch of people, in his words, were thrown into battle simply with assault rifles and without proper training. The BBC has no ability to verify this information.

And then there was a call from the TCC. “Two people came, some kind of psychological support service. I didn’t understand right away. The word ‘died’ was used. Not ‘killed,’ but ‘died.’ Suicide. It didn’t register with me,” Kateryna recalls.

She does not remember how she survived the first days after her son’s death. She says that for some time she wore his bathrobe — the only thing of Orest’s that she did not wash. It still carried her son’s scent. When she finally came to her senses, Kateryna began reading the investigation materials, and some things alarmed her.

The investigation documents state that Orest died from “self-inflicted injury by gunshot.”

“In one document it says ‘a single shot,’ and in another, that it was ‘a burst’… There were no witnesses. It was inside a building, somewhere on the second floor. They heard a shot, judging by the explanations. But the explanations are almost all carbon copies,” Kateryna says.

She fears that Orest may have been killed or driven to suicide. Another blow for Kateryna was the fact that she received no compensation or support from the state. “An investigator called me a month later and asked if I had already calmed down. He set me up to understand that I had no payments, no prospects for payments. Nothing at all,” she recalls.

Now her entire life is a struggle for the truth and for the memory of her son. Kateryna is now trying to get the investigation reopened.

“This is about justice. ‘So it turns out that you had a child, they took him, sent him to war, gave him an assault rifle. Then the next stage — they brought back a half-decomposed body, buried it. That’s it. The state has nothing more to do with it.’” Kateryna is hurt both by indifference and by the lack of understanding around her, as she often hears condemnation directed at servicemen who committed suicide and their families.

“This person was in hell. How can people who are here judge what it was like there? This person did not run away. He did not kill someone else, he killed himself,” the woman says. Tears prevent her from speaking. Helplessness and exhaustion seem to lie like a burden on the shoulders of this fragile woman. She thanks us for listening to her story and admits that in her everyday life there are very few people she can entrust it to.

“I don’t cry in public. But I cry every day,” she says quietly.

At the BBC’s request to explain the circumstances of Kateryna’s son’s mobilization, the Ground Forces Command responded that employees of the Ivano-Frankivsk TCC acted in accordance with the law. They deny the use of “physical violence or measures of psychological pressure” during mobilization. And Kateryna’s claims about the destruction of her son’s certificate of unfitness are called “not confirmed by any facts.”

The Command insists that since Kateryna’s son was classified as limited fit during wartime, he was subject to a medical re-examination in 2022; however, throughout 2022 he did not appear at the TCC and SP and did not report the circumstances that prevented this. The response to our inquiry also states that Orest “did not present supporting documents granting him the right to obtain a deferment from conscription for military service during mobilization,” and that he signed the documents for undergoing the MMC voluntarily.