Ukrainian women fear their partners' return from war
Halyna Fedkovych (right), one of the founders of the Centre for Women’s Perspectives, works in their office, alongside a colleague. Ukraine women say war has made their husbands monsters.
What you need to know:
- Women are fleeing violence—not just from the Russian armed forces; the war is driving up domestic violence as stress levels rise as traumatised men return to their families after long spells on the frontlines.
- Even if the war ends this year, experts told The Fuller Project that Ukraine will face an influx of domestic violence for years to come.
Oksana* recalls waking up in the middle of the night to find her husband’s hands around her neck. Another time, he tried to stab her.
Although they had been together for 16 years, he had episodes when he didn’t recognise her, she says.
“We were sitting in the kitchen and I was trying to explain to him that ‘I am your wife,’ and he was just telling me how he would kill me because I am an enemy.”
Oksana’s husband was one of the first to be called up to fight for Ukraine when Russia launched its invasion a year ago. The army needed experienced soldiers and he had fought in the 2014 war in the Donbas.
In May, the company he commanded was ambushed by Russian soldiers in Donetsk and spent five days fighting for their lives. He was among the few survivors. After that, she says, “he lost his mind”.
A short time later, he returned to the home they shared with their three children in Kyiv. Then the abuse started. “Before May, he didn’t even scream at me; he was the perfect husband, the perfect father,” says the 40-year-old. “This current war made him a monster.”
Perched on a bunk bed in her room at a women’s shelter on the outskirts of Lviv in western Ukraine, Oksana says she left in October, taking only her two younger children. She didn’t tell anyone where she was going—not even her eldest son, who remained at their home.
Traumatised men
Women are fleeing violence—not just from the Russian armed forces. The war is driving up domestic violence as stress levels rise and traumatised men return to their families after long spells on the frontlines.
Police say domestic violence spiked in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion in February 2022. A crisis helpline set up for the issue had a record number of calls in August.
As the war enters its second year, experts say the problem can only get worse. But shelters are already full and social services are stretched to their limits in a country where there was limited help for survivors of domestic violence even before the war. The offence was officially criminalised in Ukraine in 2019.
The Fuller Project spoke to two other women, Khrystyna* and Maria*, who fled to a women’s shelter after being abused by their partners within the last year.
Maria, 32, opens the neck of her blouse to reveal a scar from her abusive ex-boyfriend, she says. The war put “great psychological pressure” on her relationship, leading to three months of violent abuse that only ended when her boyfriend broke her collarbone, and she decided to leave. “I had deep feelings for him. I believed he could change,” she says, as tears fill her eyes.
A violence survivor and her child walk across a bridge during an excursion to the countryside surrounding Lviv, organised by the Centre for Women’s Perspectives.
Studies have shown that domestic violence, which disproportionately affects women, increases during and after war as stress levels rise, families are displaced, and traumatised combatants return home.
This can lead to physical, psychological and sexual violence inside the home. It usually goes unreported. With soldiers seen as heroes defending the country, there is a reluctance to criticise those who are abusers.
According to police records, calls reporting domestic violence across Ukraine steadily increased in the months after the invasion.
Records show there were almost 67,000 calls to police from January to April 2022, 40 per cent more than for the same period in 2021, although data for the year as a whole shows a decrease in calls.
The reason for this was not immediately clear and police did not respond to queries. Kateryna Cherepakha, who runs a hotline offering guidance to domestic violence victims, believes cases may have gone unreported as millions of civilians fled the war.
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Cherepakha’s organisation, La Strada, saw calls increase, particularly in August 2022 when calls peaked at nearly 5,000, over 50 per cent higher than the same month the year prior.
Vilena Kit, a psychologist who works with soldiers and survivors of domestic violence, says soldiers are at a high risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One of the biggest challenges she found when working with veterans from the 2014 conflict in the Donbas was alcoholism, which increases the risk of domestic violence.
Oksana’s husband struggled with PTSD in 2015 when he returned from fighting in the Donbas, but had sought help and got better. This time, he refused to get treatment. When Oksana asked the army to take him back, they refused.
“They told me, ‘No, because we don’t know what to do with him, he will damage our soldiers,’” she says. “I tried hard to find some help for him, anything - I asked every hospital and military organization,” says Oksana.
“They told me they will provide that help only after the war ends. I called the police several times and they said, ‘There is nobody. Call us when something really bad happens to you. This is not a big deal, especially with the situation the country is in now. You should be patient, he’s a hero.’” (The national police of Ukraine and ministries of interior affairs, defence, and veteran affairs have not yet responded to requests for comment.)
Oksana believes the prevailing view of all soldiers as heroes has prevented her from receiving help. She says that through the lens of the war, “I am a bad person, and he’s a hero.”
A 2019 report by Amnesty International identified the lack of reporting and investigation of domestic violence committed by soldiers in Ukraine. It looked at the impact of the 2014 conflict in the Donbas.
In 11 of the 27 cases, Amnesty International recorded, perpetrators were active or former members of the military. Eight out of the 11 cases were reported to the police, and only in two of those eight did the women succeed in obtaining restraining court orders.
Domestic abuse survivors
Julia Dontsova, the operational coordinator at Amnesty International Ukraine who worked on the report, believes the trends they found will persist and probably worsen.
“With all due respect to our military, we may indeed find ourselves in a situation where a veteran returning from war will be respected and sympathised with to such an extent that an offence such as domestic violence may well be forgiven on all levels,” she says.
Life for Oksana is finally starting to improve. She has made new friends in Lviv and hopes to move to an apartment with her children. The shelter where Oksana and the other women stay is run by the Centre for Women’s Perspectives (CWP). Before the war, they only had one shelter for domestic abuse survivors—now they have seven dotted across Lviv.
The Fuller Project spoke to two of CWP’s founders, Halyna Fedkovych and Marta Chumalo, inside their office in Lviv. It’s an old building with thick walls, which they assure is safe if there is a missile strike – “Just stay away from the windows,” says Chumalo, when the air raid siren starts to wail.
“We faced a major problem at the beginning of the war with access to services, justice and law enforcement for our clients, because nobody knew what was going on, how long (the war) would last,” says Fedkovych.
Fedkovych and Chumalo work closely with the police in Lviv to ensure they address domestic violence by soldiers. Marta Vasylkevych, head of the Lviv police’s domestic violence prevention unit, says her team has been developing new skills in preparation for an even greater increase in violence.
Chumalo says sexual violence committed by Russian soldiers has been made a “priority,” with the General Prosecutor’s Office opening a special unit last year to investigate conflict-related sexual violence, and the media heavily documenting such cases.
Many of the women helped by CWP left Ukraine in the early months of the war, after the invasion spurred a new policy that made it possible for people to take their children across the border without the other parent’s permission.
Failed justice system
After a particularly intense period of shelling, Khrystyna tried to take her 11-year-old son to Poland. Everyone else on the bus was fleeing Putin’s bombs, but Khrystyna, 40, was fleeing her boyfriend and son’s father—an alcoholic who had been abusive even before the war but became worse when the missile attacks started.
Multiple failings of the justice system led to her current situation – from the police dismissing her initial call for help as “just family stuff” when she was badly beaten while nine months pregnant with her son 11 years ago, to social services officials who believe her ex-boyfriend’s recent claims that she is the abusive one.
At the last moment, her boyfriend intervened to prevent them from leaving. The boy now lives with his father, and Khrystyna sees him only on Sundays.
In July, Ukraine ratified the Istanbul Convention, widely recognised as the most far-reaching international treaty addressing violence against women. Fedkovych hopes the move will improve protections for victims of domestic violence.
Even if the war ends this year, experts told The Fuller Project that Ukraine will face an influx of domestic violence for years to come. “The police can already see it, and we can already see it from our clients,” says Fedkovych.
“Many military men will not be very stable mentally.”
Oksana says action is needed now, particularly for soldiers who have left the army or are returning home on rotation. “I’m not sure I need justice, I would prefer that my husband has necessary treatment,” she says.
*Names changed to protect identity.
This story is published in partnership with The Fuller Project and TIME
