Soviet-era attitudes to disability hinder Ukrainian fighters’ recovery

LVIV, Ukraine — The last thing 20-year-old Ukrainian serviceman Ivan Kosyuk remembered before he woke up in a hospital was medics bandaging his eyes as they evacuated him from the front line. A missile had hit the bunker where he’d been snatching a brief respite.

“I could still see then,” he recalled. “Then I came round and I couldn’t see, I was tied to a bed, I had a tube down my throat… I thought: I’m a prisoner. But then: Why are they treating me, if I’m a prisoner?”

Kosyuk realized he was in the military hospital in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro. He had to wait another day until the staff told him he had permanently lost his sight.

“The doctor even cried,” he said.

Over three months, Kosyuk’s other injuries healed, and he was given ocular prostheses that matched his original brown eye color. But in spring 2023, he was discharged to start life again with no assistance or support. 

“They sent us home with nothing,” Kosyuk’s mother Anastasia said. “We thought we were alone. He was 19 years old, and all the lights had been turned out.”

According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Social Policy, the number of Ukrainians with disabilities has increased by 300,000 since the February 2022 full-scale invasion by Russia. More than 20,000 people have had amputations. The country’s Ministry of Veteran Affairs has said there may eventually be 5 million veterans and family members, many of whom will need help for physical and psychological trauma.

The concern among many patients and their families is that Ukraine is historically ill-equipped to deal with disability, a hangover from Soviet days where disabled people were kept out of sight.

Ukraine must continue to form a society that is understanding and inclusive, said Yevheniia Smirnova, the country’s deputy minister of education and science.

“The shift from stigmatization to acceptance and support began long before the full-scale invasion,” she said. “We are striving to influence this process daily.”

But there’s still a way to go. While hospitals and some rehabilitation centers provide medical care to treat injuries, veterans often receive little help reintegrating into society.

While hospitals and some rehabilitation centers provide medical care to treat injuries, veterans often receive little help reintegrating into society. | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images

“Since Soviet times, we’ve had this concept that people with disabilities are not accepted in society,” said Oleksandr Ishchenko, who attended a rehabilitation course for blind veterans along with Kosyuk in February in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine. He lost his eyes after being brutally injured while serving in the territorial defense forces. Now, on top of learning how to navigate the world without vision, he struggles with the fear that others, including his family, are horrified by the sight of his injuries. 

“Since 2022 we have so many people with disabilities, but they are afraid to go out,” Ishchenko said. “They are ashamed of their white cane; they are ashamed, like me, to show a face like mine.”

Tough sell

Ukrainian NGO Contemporary View started providing rehabilitation for blind veterans of the war in east Ukraine in 2019, offering physio and occupational therapy; instruction in adaptive technology and Braille; psychotherapy and peer support; and orientation in the surrounding cities. 

One of the biggest challenges is tracking down veterans in the first place, and then coaxing them to actually attend.

“We have to really persuade them,” said Olesya Perepechenko, the NGO’s director. 

Herself sight-impaired, Perepechenko finds blind veterans through word of mouth, via doctors, volunteers or other patients. She then spends hours visiting them in hospital or talking to them on the phone.

“I even trick them a little. I say: ‘Come on, let’s go on the course and we’ll just relax.’ And afterward they say: ‘There wasn’t a single day of relaxing!’”

Kosyuk was one such reluctant participant.

“Before his injury, you couldn’t find him at home, he was always going somewhere, meeting someone,” his mother Anastasia said. “After the injury, we were at home for almost a year, and it was really hard. He got really depressed.”  

Perepechenko and her team called Kosyuk many times before he agreed to attend.

“I thought: ‘What can they teach me?’” Kosyuk said. “Then I started to encounter problems, like to go somewhere by myself, or something concrete like getting something to eat, and I realized I don’t know how to do it properly … So we came, and I don’t regret it.”

Since 2022, the number of blind veterans — many of whom have additional traumas such as loss of hearing and smell and amputations — has increased to hundreds.

Contemporary View’s course is now part of a pilot supported by the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science, which intends to adopt a standardized national program of education and social rehabilitation for blind veterans and war victims, as well as parallel education for students in how to communicate with and assist them.

Ukraine adopted building rules in 2018 supposed to ensure accessibility, but in practice there is little understanding of or attention to fulfilling them properly. | Chris McGrath/Getty Images

“The ministry wants to unite the best experience we have,” Smirnova said. “We have no other choice but to overcome the consequences of this war.”

Soviet overhang

After 1945, thousands of wounded war veterans were rounded up by Soviet authorities and sent to remote institutions, most infamously on the Valaam archipelago.   

This attitude of hiding away disabled people still lingers, according to Anna Horkun, project manager for HAB Lviv Habilitation Centre, a halfway house between medical treatment and independent living. The center opened in February and provides a completely accessible residential space, physiotherapy, psychological support and self-help groups.   

“The administrators of the building asked us to cover the windows, because the sight of our disabled spoils the picture,” Horkun said. “For part of society, it’s an interference in their lives. But this is a huge part of all our lives now.”

Horkun worked in marketing until the full-scale invasion made her radically shift her priorities. Many others have had a similar awakening, she says.

“There are active young people, there’s education about communicating with veterans and the disabled, there are people who want to know about this, and the number is really growing,” Horkun said.

Ukraine adopted building rules in 2018 supposed to ensure accessibility, but in practice there is little understanding of or attention to fulfilling them properly. Even new buildings lack suitable ramps or doors wide enough for wheelchairs. Technology for blind people, like textured tiles on pavements, if in place at all, is frequently installed incorrectly.

“It’s often just to tick a box,” Horkun said.

There are signs of change. The Ukrainian government has introduced pilot centers for veterans’ development, based in higher education institutions, which offer training in professions and entrepreneurial skills, and also train veterans’ assistants. Another project compensating employers who create opportunities for professionals with disabilities has provided more than 100 jobs for people.

But the shift requires courage from veterans themselves too.

“If we just sit at home feeling sorry for ourselves, then people won’t understand. They’ll write some post online saying: ‘We are so sorry; well done, heroes’ — and that’s it,” Ishchenko, one of the blind veterans, said. “Thanks to projects like this rehabilitation, we go out into the city, and people see us for what we are. People see that we exist.”