"The soldier cannot speak about what happened to him. It’s been a month since ‘the tragedy,’ as he calls it. When the subject arises, he freezes and looks at the floor. He gulps for air. He cannot say it. His doctor, a motherly woman, speaks for him: There were four of them. They were stationed near the front line, in eastern Ukraine, and on that night they shot a Russian drone from the sky. A small victory. Then its wreckage hurtled down, hunks of ragged metal slicing into the men below. He was the only one left standing. In the numb hours that followed, someone came to collect the others — one dead, two wounded — and he was left to hold the position alone through that freezing night and into the next day. ...”
Inside a psychiatric hospital in Kyiv, the growing mental trauma of the war is written on every soldier’s face.
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