IVANO-FRANKIVSK, Ukraine — Rodion Hryhoryan, 41, came to the front line to teach Ukrainian soldiers how to combat stress, but ended up under stress himself.
Soon after he started his first anti-stress seminar at the military unit near Sloviansk, a city in Donetsk Oblast 665 kilometers from Kyiv, a sniper started shooting at them. The soldiers and their coach had to fall to the ground immediately.
While on the ground, one of the soldiers turned to Hryhoryan, his hand propping up his head.
“So, you’ve come to teach us something about stress, have you?” he said jokingly. “Well, we’re listening.”
Hryhoryan, somewhat shaken, continued the class – only to be interrupted again by a shell flying over close by, forcing everyone to run and squeeze into a small dugout. Nevertheless, the class continued after the attack, and many soldiers said they found it useful: They called Hryhoryan to thank him afterwards.
Hryhoryan is one of hundreds of volunteers providing psychological help to Ukraine’s military in its war with Russia-separatist forces in the Donbas. They work without any insurance, social guarantees or payment in order to fill a huge gap in psychological education and rehabilitation services in the military.
While doing it, they often have to overcome the skeptical attitude towards therapy common among soldiers and veterans.
Viktoria Arnautova, 44, head of the Maibuttia Resource Center in Kyiv, which includes 25 psychologists, including Hryhoryan, said that soldiers at the front experience combat stress. Like common stress, it consists of four stages: shock, the adrenaline stage, exhaustion, and retrieval, or post-traumatic growth.
At the seminars, psychologists explain to the soldiers how they will feel at each stage, and how they can help themselves and each other.
“The most critical thing is to give psychological education to the military at the very beginning of their service, during their training,” Arnautova said. “But we were only able to do so for the fifth and sixth waves of mobilization. Now we have to deal with the consequences of that.”
Olena Batynska, 53, a psychotherapist from Mykolayiv with the Psychological Crisis Service, another organization which works with the military, agrees that psychological training has to come at the start of military service.
“The earlier it comes, the better the person will feel when he returns (from service),” Batynska said.
Batynska spent last summer at the Shyrokiy Lan military base, training recently mobilized soldiers in an open field under the baking sun. Batynska often travels to the Donbas at the request of brigade commanders. She also takes part in rehabilitation programs run by non-governmental organizations. A state rehabilitation program for the military is only now being developed.
Rodion Hryhoryan gives an express anti-stress seminar for Ukrainian soldiers at a military base in Kryviy Rih on June 6. After delivering first aid kits, helmets, vests, night vision and thermo vision devices to the front line for year and a half, he realized that psychological training was as important for the military as equipment. (Courtesy)
Many psychologists, including Arnautova and Batynska, were volunteers during the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2013-2014. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its aggression in the east, they started helping the Ukrainian military make up for the shortage of military psychologists.
Hryhoryan first traveled to the Donbas in 2014. At that moment, he said, the soldiers needed basic supplies more than psychological help. Every week he delivered everything from food and military uniforms, kevlar helmets and bulletproof vests, to first aid kits, night vision devices and laptops to Ukrainian soldiers based all along the frontline. He was featured in a 2016 documentary called “Volunteers” by Latvian director Janis Vingris.
When the demand for basic items for the military was met, Hryhoryan started conducting anti-stress training courses. Now he spends most of his time traveling to different parts of Ukraine to give his seminars.
“Everyone helps the nation to win this war by doing their best in their particular field,” he said.
Now the National Guard is considering including Hryhoryan’s methods in its rehabilitation program, and the Latvian military has invited him to share his experience.
Military psychologists believe that only a third of those who take part in combat a free of psychological or psychosomatic problems. Another third will fight their problems themselves or with a professional help. But another 30 percent form a risk group in which post-traumatic disorders and even suicides can occur.
But if veterans manage to defeat the consequences of combat stress, which include flashbacks, insomnia, irritation, aggression, depression, and alcoholism, they will come out of it much stronger than they were before, according to Hryhoryan.
Andriy Farmuha, 35, a veteran of the war in Donbas and a leader of local veteran organization came to Hryhoryan’s seminar in Ivano-Frankivsk on July 4, and enjoyed it.
“Ideally, it would be good for all our citizens to attend such training courses,” he said after the seminar. “The war isn’t making anyone more optimistic or more confident.”
Oksana Lyachynska is a freelance journalist and former Kyiv Post staff writer.
