Kyiv
—
Alisa still remembers the first time her husband hurt her. While on vacation from the front lines in eastern Ukraine, he drank and became aggressive.
“Then he started strangling me. Even he was frightened by what he did,” Alissa told CNN.
“If he wasn’t a soldier, he probably wouldn’t have put up with it,” Alisa said. He asked CNN to use a pseudonym due to safety and privacy concerns. “I told myself this wasn’t his fault and I needed to be there for him. You can’t abandon someone just because you saw something that destroyed you. Maybe they just need help.”
But things got even worse. Every time my husband returned home from the war, he became more abusive and violent.
Alisa’s story is not unique. Violence against women and girls was a problem in Ukraine, as in many countries, even before Russia launched its unprovoked full-scale invasion in February 2022, but more than four years of war have exacerbated the crisis.
According to a 2019 report, two-thirds of Ukrainian women reported experiencing mental, physical, or sexual violence since the age of 15.
Ukraine has made some progress in addressing this issue, including by adopting stronger legislation and ratifying the Istanbul Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. But UN Women warned last year that the war had “reversed decades of progress” in women’s rights.
Experts working in Ukraine told CNN that the number of infected people they are dealing with is increasing.
The Ukrainian branch of La Strada, an international human rights NGO, recorded a 20% increase in calls for help between 2022 and 2025, and a 5 percentage point increase in the rate of calls for physical violence.
Halina Skipalska, country leader for HealthRight International and head of the Ukrainian Public Health Foundation, which runs several women’s shelters and helplines, said everyone in Ukraine has been living with chronic stress for more than four years.
“It affects people in different ways. Some people seek help, others don’t. There are many facets to this, including financial instability, psychological stress, alcohol and other addictions, and feelings of hopelessness,” she says.
“It’s no secret that all of these factors can lead to domestic violence,” she says.
Tetyana Zotova, head of Kyiv’s Center for Gender Equality and Domestic Violence Prevention and Countermeasures, said she is increasingly receiving calls for help from families of military personnel, including those struggling to control their aggression.
This is partly due to the fact that the size of Ukraine’s military has more than tripled in the past four years, but studies across multiple countries also show that the prevalence of domestic violence is higher among military families compared to the general population.
“The number of traumatized people is increasing. They have gone to the front lines and seen a reality that is completely different from civilian life,” Zotova said.
Post-traumatic stress disorder, exposure to violence, traumatic brain injury, substance abuse, financial hardship, and life-altering injuries are all associated with increased rates of domestic violence.
However, the topic remains taboo.
The war had a devastating impact on Ukrainians. The government has not released official casualty figures, but recent estimates estimate that between 100,000 and 140,000 people fighting for Ukraine died.
“Not all soldiers become tyrants at home,” Zotova stressed, but the public recognition of the great sacrifices made means the issue of domestic violence by military personnel remains “very, very sensitive.” Victims are less likely to report it and less likely to receive support from those around them.
“There is a huge distrust of the authorities because there is a belief that the perpetrators cannot be punished because they are heroes and soldiers,” she said, adding that her department is running an awareness campaign on the issue.
Olha is fully aware of this. When her husband became increasingly violent, she called the police, who told her he should have been treated better.
“He is a wounded soldier. The police did nothing to him, but they fined me for filing a false report,” Olha told CNN.
Olha, who asked CNN not to use her last name, said she called police several times in the past few months while living with her husband. “They never responded to my calls. They came several times and did nothing, but one day they finally registered domestic violence and my husband and I went to a psychologist and social services together,” she said.
CNN has asked Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, which oversees police, for comment on its response to reports of domestic violence.
But Olha said her husband’s attempts to get help didn’t last long after police intervened. Life quickly returned to familiar patterns.
“I knew it would escalate little by little because he would drink, but then it would be a bad couple of days…and then he would say he loved me very much, then he would hit me in a fit of jealousy, say he had never loved a woman this much, and then kneel in front of me crying,” she said.
Her husband self-medicated with painkillers, drank heavily, and verbally abused her. Still, she continued to excuse his actions, blaming them on the trauma he suffered at the front.
“A terrible thing happened to him there. He crawled half-dead in the forest for two days. He never recovered from it, never healed. I saw him never heal physically or mentally,” she said.
And one day he almost killed her.
“He was really angry. He put a bag over my head and tried to cut off my ears. I mean, he was completely insane. He tried to break my legs with a hammer, he tried to hurt me with a knife and a potato peeler. When he let go of me, I ran away,” she said.
She fled to the municipal “invincibility point.” The site is a public space run by authorities where people can stay warm and charge their appliances during frequent power outages caused by Russian shelling.
“They called an ambulance and the police,” she said. Authorities helped find space for her in a women’s shelter in Kiev. Finally someone listened to her.
A petite woman with her hands folded in her lap and her hair tied up in a long braid spoke to CNN in the secret compound of a residential building. She’s safe there. Doors are locked, windows have security bars, and surveillance cameras are always pointed at the entrance.
Escaping the horrific cycle of domestic violence is incredibly difficult for any victim. But the war has made it more difficult for Ukrainian women to seek help.
Ukraine has introduced a new law that will require all men between the ages of 18 and 60 to register with the military in 2024, making men between the ages of 25 and 60 eligible for mobilization. However, many ignored the law.
According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, about 2 million Ukrainians are currently “wanted” for evading the military draft. In addition, approximately 200,000 soldiers are absent from work without formal leave. Some have fled the country, but many remain in Ukraine, flying under the radar to avoid capture.
“These men are at home. They can’t go out because they might be taken away by the police. They are under high stress and can become alcoholic and become violent,” Skipalska said.
“But this problem is very difficult to deal with. Women are often reluctant to report for fear that they will be immediately taken to the army or prison,” she says.
The stress of war is affecting people across the country.
Ludmila, who asked CNN not to use her last name, said the war had made her family life hell.
Ludmila told CNN at one of the shelters run by Skipalska’s group that she had been married for 10 years to a man who was controlling and at times physically aggressive towards her.
“I endured these as if they were one-time events. My mother told me it would be okay… She said we needed time to get used to each other and that we had to make compromises,” Ludmila told CNN, holding her young son in her lap.
However, after the invasion, the situation became even worse. Ludmila’s husband, a draft-exempt foreigner, lost his job as a security guard after a client fled Ukraine. He became dependent on Lyudmila and did not like it.
The aggression further escalated after she gave birth to her son. “He controlled my every move, all my finances, my communications with colleagues and friends,” she said. “He isolated me from the outside world and his blows became more powerful. He knows where to hit to hurt without being visible on the outside, like the head or the feet.”
The last straw, she said, was when he threatened her in front of her son.
“I decided this is it,” she told CNN. She and her young son have been staying at the shelter for several months and are currently preparing to move into a new apartment. “I want my children to grow up to be well-rounded people, with role models that don’t disrespect or disrespect women.”
Alisa is only 23 years old, but she is currently divorced and lives alone. She has been undergoing therapy and now feels happy and ready to live. She got a new job, reunited with old friends and made new ones
Looking back, she believes her husband always had violent tendencies. “I don’t think war itself changes a person. It just brings out what’s already inside of you. Maybe his aggressiveness came out at some point. The war just made it faster, stronger, tougher. But the war didn’t change him,” she said.
“There are many men who have gone through much worse[than my husband]but they don’t act like him.”
