Charlotte Gallagher
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Her only son, Orest, is buried here.
Katerina tells us her son was a shy young man with impaired eyesight.
He was stopped by a conscription patrol on the street and sent to the front line as a communications officer.
He was torn from his normal life, placed in unbearable conditions, with a constant threat to his own life.
Then came the news.
He had taken his own life.
They took my child, sent him to war, then brought me back his half-decomposed body.
Outside Kyiv, Mariana shows us a video her husband Anatoly sent from the front line.
He describes the desperate conditions and need for support.
He was a very kind man.
The war broke his mind.
He took his own life in a military hospital after being injured in battle.
I hear women say, my husband died a hero, but yours, he did it himself.
Like the other women we spoke to, Maryana was denied compensation and couldn't bury him with honors.
She now feels judged by other widows.
Olya Reshetilova is Ukraine's first military ombudswoman.
She says she receives reports of three to four suicides a month and concedes that number could rise as the war continues.
She is pushing for stronger psychological support for soldiers and changes to how cases of suicide are investigated and documented.