Latest news with #Kolesnikov
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ukraine is about to have a major PoW crisis
When Maksym Kolesnikov returned from almost a year in a Russian prison camp, 32kg lighter than he was before, the first things he wanted were warm socks and fried chicken. Captured in March 2022 while defending Kyiv, Mr Kolesnikov endured relentless horrors at the hands of Russian soldiers. The Ukrainian was tortured with electric shocks and beaten, his knee shattered. He was starved and became emaciated. In the biting cold, Mr Kolesnikov wore the same clothes he was captured in, the same thin socks on his frozen feet. But none of this compared with the psychological horror. 'In Russian captivity, you are never safe,' Mr Kolesnikov said. 'At any moment, they can beat or torture you. You eat badly, you sleep badly, you know that they can do what they want because they don't see you as a human being.' Credit: Andriy Kachor At home, when he was finally reunited with his family, Mr Kolesnikov said: 'People saw the human in me again.' But gallstone disease, muscle atrophy, chronic fatigue, contusions and a shattered knee were just some of the scars that followed him and his fellow captives home from months of hell. The 1,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war exchanged last week for the same number of Russians will confront the same challenges. 'It's a situation of such long-term stress,' Mr Kolesnikov said of being a prisoner. 'When you come back, you're a different person.' The largest exchange in the war to date saw a staggered release of hundreds of flag-donning Ukrainian captives from Friday through to Sunday. Some of the prisoners have spent as long as three years in Russian jails. But once the cameras stopped filming the tearful reunions, the former captives were left to return to normal life. The initial gruelling stages of physical and psychological rehabilitation will take place at military hospitals and sanatoriums across the country. But reintegrating into civilian society will be even more complex. Ivona Kostyna, the chairman and co-founder of the NGO Veteran Hub, said an overarching national strategy for veterans and prisoners of war is not there. She said that veteran reintegration in Ukraine is posing an unprecedented public health challenge. Many veterans, especially former prisoners of war, will return with complex health needs and may struggle to adapt to the workplace or rediscover their place in the community. Veteran Hub provides free legal, psychological, educational and employment support to veterans and their families, which would be impossible without the help of NGOs. The charity began in 2016, when it was becoming clear that veterans returning from the war in eastern Ukraine were struggling. 'When we started, we didn't even have a vocabulary for veteran reintegration,' Ms Kostyna explained. At the start of the full-scale invasion, Veteran Hub was forced to dramatically upscale. With funding rescinded from the US this year, it is under huge strain and fears that the Ukrainian authorities will not pick up the mantle of its work. 'We are just a patch on a broken system. The only reason we exist is because the system doesn't work,' Ms Kostyna said. Ukraine's veteran reintegration effort has never been done on such a large scale. Today, Ukraine has 1.2 million registered veterans, but official projections say the figure will rise to between five and six million in Ukraine's 40-million population after the war is over. This means that veterans could account for 15 per cent of Ukraine's population. Many will struggle to find stable employment or opportunities for retraining. Some will have sustained permanently disabling injuries and carry a heavy psychological burden, which threatens to destabilise themselves and their families. 'Most of the data we have [on veteran reintegration] is from Western societies, where a smaller number of people have been sent overseas to fight and then they have come back to a peaceful society,' Ms Kostyna explained. 'In our case, you go to war, you come back home, and you're still at war. For some people, you're from the occupied territories, and you also no longer have a home.' Ukraine draws heavily from its reserve of veterans because they are skilled and require less training than newcomers. Ms Kostyna estimated that up to 70 per cent of Ukrainian veterans could stay in the reserve. 'Veterans are the foundation of national security,' she said. 'But we understand that this means veterans are never fully going back to civilian life.' 'So you have this disparity between a civilian who has never served, and a veteran who has served two or three times, maybe over 20 years. And that veteran has never had time to commit to civilian life, so they will have a much lower well-being,' Kostyna said. 'The challenge here in Ukraine is that we are becoming a country of veterans. We have already been fighting for 11 years. We could be fighting forever, for whoever knows how many more years, how many more iterations of war.' To tackle the lack of employment opportunities, the government established a fund for entrepreneurship among returning veterans and their spouses. Veteran-run businesses can be found dotted around cities in Ukraine, such as Veterano, a lucrative franchise of war-themed pizzerias and cafes founded and run by veteran pizza chefs, and TYTANOVI coffee, a cafe which hires veterans with prosthetics as baristas. Oleksandr Manchenko, 40, built the Ola Dance Studio with the help of his wife, a fellow dancer who he met via TikTok while he was serving on the front line. Alongside their usual operations, the studio in central Kyiv runs dance classes for other veterans to help them rehabilitate when they return from combat. 'We had one guy who was here, and for a time, when he came back, he just wanted to kill everyone,' says Mr Manchenko. 'After about a month and a half with us, it was clear that his thinking had changed and that period of his life was over.' For Mr Manchenko, this is proof that the best form of recovery is community. 'It was difficult for me, coming home. I had PTSD, and it took some time to become used to normal things. From time to time, things I didn't understand happened, and I became full of anger and hatred. But things got better when I made the decision to start dancing and talking again.' With funding granted for fewer than 600 veteran-owned businesses as of last year, entrepreneurship may be little more than a cosmetic fix for the scale of economic and social disadvantage felt by soldiers. Without a structure to help them cope in the long term with persistent health complaints from traumatic brain injury or other common disabilities, as well as repeated psychological trauma, the effects of unsuccessful reintegration could be felt for decades. Mr Kolesnikov, now back to a healthy weight, works for a defence tech company to feel 'closer to the military community'. Though there are still difficulties – while holidaying abroad, he was paralysed with fear at the sound of a plane because of its similarity to an FPV drone – being close to his former combatants helps. 'The other day, four guys from my battalion went to get a coffee in Kyiv, and we all had the same thought at the same time,' he said. 'Kyiv is still free, and this is our impact... it was our fight.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
United News of India
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- United News of India
Soviet, Russian Choreographer Yuri Grigorovich dies
Moscow, May 19 (UNI) Soviet and Russian choreographer Yuri Grigorovich died at the age of 99, his assistant Alexander Kolesnikov told Sputnik on Monday. "An hour and a half ago, the outstanding Soviet and Russian choreographer Yuri Grigorovich died at the age of 99," Kolesnikov said. The date and place of the farewell ceremony and funeral will be announced additionally, Kolesnikov added. UNI SPUTNIK GNK
