Addiction Destroyed the Ukrainian army: War Nightmare Engulfs Soldiers
TEHRAN (Defapress) - As the war between Russia and Ukraine enters its fifth year, the Ukrainian army is now grappling with a devastating internal feud on the front lines, which, according to reports from media outlets such as DW and The Guardian, is nothing less than a growing crisis of drug and alcohol addiction among its troops.
Assessments by doctors and specialized organizations show that more than half of Ukrainian soldiers deployed on the front lines have experience with drugs, alcohol, or a combination of both; a bitter phenomenon that a former Ukrainian marine officer confirmed, admitting how addiction, after being injured, destroyed the control of his life and ultimately his position as commander of 200 soldiers.
The roots of this disaster lie deep in severe physical exhaustion, war injuries, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Experts and psychiatrists emphasize that due to severe manpower shortages and heavy casualties, wounded soldiers are returned to the front lines before they are fully recovered, and many of them remain in the hell of war for months without rotation or hope of discharge.
This situation, along with denied leave requests and the breakdown of family relationships due to the migration of spouses to Europe, has instilled a deep sense of injustice and despair among the troops, leading them to turn to drugs to escape reality.
The dimensions of this crisis have even spread to the lives of ordinary citizens; Local reports from areas such as Krasnoyarsk suggest that the drugs have sometimes been delivered to soldiers in camouflaged chocolates and via drones, and the resulting hallucination has led to armed clashes between soldiers and civilians.
Despite the official ban on drugs in the army, the anxiety of prolonged combat has been a major obstacle to containing the situation, and censorship or a lack of official statistics have obscured the exact dimensions of this biological time bomb.
Ultimately, the crisis has become the Achilles heel of the Ukrainian army in one of the most attritional battles of this century. Soldiers who once entered the field motivated by defense are now trapped in their trenches by addiction, in the absence of support strategies and proper rotation of forces.
Resorting to deadly tranquilizers to escape the nightmare of war is a clear sign of the psychological collapse of an army that, before its defeat against Russia, is losing its grip on its own exhaustion and inner despair.
