About 500 Ukrainian servicemen commit suicide upon return from war in Donbas

15:28, 22.06.2017 1 min read

About 500 Ukrainian servicemen have committed suicide upon their return from the war in Donbas, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said.

"According to the military prosecution service, about 500 suicides committed by participants in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) were registered upon their return from the war zone as of early June," the minister said in an article titled, 'Strategy of hybrid peace', for the newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda.

Avakov referred to the international standard of military conflicts: 90-95% of soldiers eventually develop medical (nervous) conditions and social problems, and about a third of them demonstrate post-traumatic stress disorder, whose frequent outcome is suicide.

The number of domestic violence reports filed by families of Ukrainian combatants in Donbas grew eight-fold as early as in 2015, Avakov said.