Ukraine’s War Widows Are Fighting for Money
Their husbands died defending the country—and now their families are struggling for compensation.
Ukraine's war widows are fighting for compensation after their husbands were wrongly classified as suicides. Ulyana, a widow from Ternopil, moved with her two-year-old son to Ternopil after her husband, a Ukrainian soldier named Vlad, was reported to have died by suicide in 2023 at a military base near the front lines. Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, and Vlad joined Kyiv's territorial defense, comprised of volunteers who fought alongside the military to stop Russian advances.
When Ulyana and her mother-in-law saw Vlad's body in the morgue, she initially refused to accept the suicide ruling, believing her husband had been murdered by someone in his brigade. Despite her lawyer's efforts to prove the murder, the court case has dragged on for years, leaving Ulyana's compensation claim in limbo. Ukraine grants compensation to war widows and families of fallen soldiers under certain conditions, but those whose loved ones were declared suicides are not entitled to any payment.
The government once promised a one-time payment of 15 million Ukrainian hryvnias ($335,000) for soldiers killed in combat, but widows of those who died by suicide receive nothing. Ulyana, who now works remotely as a sales representative, relies on her late husband's military pension and a social security pension of 4,700 hryvnias ($105) a month, barely enough to cover rent and food in a country where the average monthly salary is $700.
Olena Bieliachkova, an advisor to Ukraine's Office of the Military Ombudsman, acknowledged the families' distrust towards military units, particularly in cases of suicide, and emphasized the importance of investigating the circumstances surrounding the death.
Written by urgent.news from Foreign Policy's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
