When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in February that Russian forces were entering Ukraine, a wave of shock washed over 22-year-old student Vasilina Kotova that turned quickly to despair and then depression.
“I didn’t leave my house for two months,” Kotova, a computer science student, told reporters.
“I had no energy anymore to do anything. It wasn’t even so much the energy, but the desire to do anything, like there wasn’t any point,” she said.
Photo: AFP
Eight months into the stagnating conflict, fighting in Ukraine has brought with it threats of nuclear weapons, sanctions that have isolated Russians and a conscription drive that has sent thousands fleeing the country.
Kotova is just one among a rising tide of Russians who have grown more anxious and depressed with the conflict grinding on, with its shock waves being felt back home and the future uncertain.
The result, professionals in the industry say, is a creeping mental health crisis that is spurring shortages of anti-depressants and soaring demand for psychological support.
At first, Kotova said, she thought that the hundreds of thousands of Russians who rushed to flee after the conflict began were “fools” and that the Kremlin’s “special military operation” would not touch her personally.
However, then Putin began drafting hundreds of thousands of men into the Russian army in September and Kotova began to worry her father or brother could be sent to the front.
When Moscow began to sound the alarm — without providing evidence — that Ukraine was preparing to use a so-called dirty bomb, her mother’s concern grew.
“And then you start thinking: ‘What if I’m the real fool?’ and your anxiety just gets worse and worse,” Kotova said.
After Putin announced the mobilization drive, a record number of Russians — nearly 70 percent — reported feeling “anxious,” the Kremlin-friendly pollster FOM said.
The independent Levada Centre one month later found that nearly 90 percent of Russians were “worried” by the conflict.
The pollster said 57 percent backed talks with Kyiv — up 9 percentage points from the previous month — suggesting growing support for a speedy resolution.
Around Kotova, that concern is beginning to show.
Last month, after Putin said the world was facing “perhaps the most dangerous and unpredictable decade” since World War II, local media reported that some residents of her neighborhood had begun building a bomb shelter in a nearby underground parking.
Others, including Kotova, are turning to more conventional coping aid: medication.
She said the measure has had a positive impact.
In the first nine months of the year, spending on drugs to cope with depression jumped 70 percent year-on-year, official figures showed.
The YouTalk psychological consultation service has seen “the number of online requests increase by 40 percent since the mobilization,” its cofounder Anna Krymskaya told reporters.
Clients concerned about depression have grown by 50 percent in that time, she said.
The growing sense of doom is being felt across Russia’s political divide.
Ilya Kaznacheyev says he was “happy and proud” when Putin launched Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
However, the 37-year-old has been in a state of “permanent anxiety” since March after Russian troops failed to capture the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
“What’s worse than a war launched? A war lost,” the bearded man told reporters in a Moscow bookstore.
Kaznacheyev said he was considering taking anti-depressants and was worried about shortages of imported drugs due to Western sanctions.
Zoloft, one of the most commonly prescribed medications, has already disappeared from pharmacies in the Russian capital.
“A lot of people rushed to stock up,” neurologist Oleg Levin told reporters. “And they did the right thing.”
Irrespective of their stance on Ukraine, “everyone is worried about the future,” Levin added.
LOST BATTLE: The Varroa mite, which Canberra has called the ‘most serious pest’ to face bees, would cause serious economic damage, an ecologist said Australia yesterday abandoned its fight to eradicate the destructive Varroa mite, an invasive parasite responsible for the collapse of honeybee populations across the planet. Desperate to keep Varroa out of the country, authorities have destroyed more than 14,000 infected beehives since the tiny red-brown pest was first detected north of Sydney in June last year. The government said its US$64 million eradication plan could not stop the mite from spreading, and the country’s beekeepers should now prepare to live with the incursion. “The recent spike in new detections have made it clear that the Varroa mite infestation is more widespread and has
SCIENTIFIC TREASURE: Preserved building blocks from the dawn of our solar system, the samples would help scientists better understand how the Earth and life formed NASA’s first asteroid samples fetched from deep space on Sunday parachuted into the Utah desert to cap a seven-year journey. In a flyby of Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the sample capsule from 100,000km out. The small capsule landed four hours later on a remote expanse of military land, as the ship set off after another asteroid. “We have touchdown,” mission recovery operations announced, immediately repeating the news since the landing occurred three minutes early. Officials later said the orange striped parachute opened four times higher than anticipated — at about 6,100m — basing it on the deceleration rate. To everyone’s relief, the
COP28 AGENDA: Beijing’s climate envoy said that China was open to negotiating a global renewable energy target as long as it took economic conditions into account The complete phasing-out of fossil fuels is not realistic, China’s top climate official said on Thursday, adding that such fuels must continue to play a vital role in maintaining global energy security. Chinese Special Envoy on Climate Change Xie Zhenhua (解振華) was responding to comments by ambassadors at a forum in Beijing ahead of the UN’s COP28 climate meeting in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in November. Reporters obtained a copy of text of Xie’s speech and a video recording of the meeting. Countries are under pressure to make more ambitious climate pledges after a UN-led global “stocktake” said that 20 gigatonnes of additional
The son of jailed Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai (黎智英) on Wednesday said that he did not want to see his father die in detention, as his lawyers raised the prospect that his long-delayed trial might be pushed back indefinitely. Sebastien Lai (黎崇恩) also said that the British government was “shameful” for its lack of action in helping his father, who is a British national. Jimmy Lai, the 75-year-old founder of Hong Kong’s now-defunct Apple Daily, has been in detention since he was arrested in 2020 under a National Security Law imposed by Beijing. The Hong Kong businessman faces up to life