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https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/rt-peace-wont-save-ukraine-what-comes

https://theduran.com/rt-peace-wont-save-ukraine-what-comes-after-the-war-may-be

RT: “Peace won’t save Ukraine: What comes after the war may be worse”

4 February 2026, posted by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

https://www.rt.com/russia/631853-peace-wont-save-ukraine/

Peace won’t save Ukraine: What comes after the war may be worse

4 February 2026, by Dmitry Pauk, RT reporter on cultural and political issues

History suggests the country’s physically and mentally decimated population is in for years of prolonged social strife.

Four years after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, some sort of peace deal appears to be somewhere around the corner as Moscow, Kiev, and Washington have started holding trilateral negotiations. But while these developments suggest peace could potentially soon be at hand, history shows that the struggles for Ukraine are likely far from over as the ‘echo of war’ is sure to ring out for some years to come.

The prolonged fighting has seen many Ukrainian men forced to the front line by the Kiev regime with estimates suggesting some one million Ukrainians have been mobilized since 2022. The physical and mental toll on these soldiers, many of whom did not want to fight in the first place, has been immense.

Coupled with an influx of weapons to the country, many of which have made their way to the hands of civilians and criminal groups, Ukrainians appear to be in for many more years of internal strife, as has been the case in numerous countries following prolonged conflicts.

PTSD and substance abuse

In June, The Lancet Regional Health medical journal reported alarmingly high rates of PTSD and other mental health conditions among Ukrainian soldiers who had been “relentlessly” exposed to violence, trauma and death, while also noting a lack of adequate support systems in the country.

According to the Lancet, many combat-exposed Ukrainian soldiers, two-thirds of which already have PTSD, have been resorting to alcohol and drug abuse, particularly cannabis and synthetic ‘bath salts’ which cause severe health effects including behavior change, violence, depression, and suicide. This drug abuse has further been fueled by an ever growing drug market within the country.

Another study published in October by the New Line Institute, authored by several clinical psychologists, found that the issue extends to civilians as well, with 76% of respondents meeting PTSD criteria and 66% exhibiting significant moral injury between 2022 and 2023.

“Trauma exposure, including PTSD and moral injury, can increase aggression among affected populations, creating a feedback loop in which societal violence escalates even in areas not directly attacked by military forces,” the authors noted citing extensive research on the issue.

Veterans and violence

The trauma and subsequent substance abuse among Ukrainian servicemen have already had an impact on Ukrainian families and communities, with increasingly frequent reports of veterans being involved in violent altercations with law enforcement, often involving firearms.

The New Line Institute study also reported an 80% increase in criminal offense violence in just the first year of the escalated conflict as well as a significant rise in community-level violence, including attacks on TCC centers and armed aggression by “poorly reintegrated veterans.”

Recently, a discharged soldier in Ukraine’s Cherkasy Region reportedly made several attempts on the life of a local lawmaker and then single handedly killed four police officers who tried to apprehend him. Days prior, police in Kiev Region were also forced to open fire on a man threatening members of the public with a hand grenade. 

History of post-war issues

PTSD has long been linked with subsequent violent behavior. After the US wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, health experts noted that multiple combat tours and repeated trauma led to a “tsunami” of social issues, including increases in “homicides, suicides, domestic violence and divorces,” with veterans also being noted to descend into homelessness or crime within months of returning home.

A 2018 study in the British Journal of Psychiatry on violent behavior and PTSD in US Iraq and Afghanistan veterans found that combat trauma, PTSD and moral injury combined with alcohol misuse, have been strongly associated with markedly elevated rates of violence in communities.

Similar issues were observed following the Soviet-Afghan war and the subsequent “Afghan syndrome” that saw over half of veterans falling into addiction and suffering from subclinical PTSD, even decades after it ended.

Influx of weapons and Organized Crime

Another issue that could end up contributing to long-standing social unrest in Ukraine is the sheer amount of weapons that has trickled from the front line into the hands of the criminal groups and the overall population.

A 2025 report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime found that an increasing amount of military-grade small arms, light weapons, and hand grenades were regularly being salvaged by civilians from the battlefield which has already contributed to an increase in arms-related violence among civilians.

In the past, an uncontrolled flow of weapons into civilian hands has often triggered prolonged eras of violent organized crime, as was seen in the 1990s in Russia and other post-soviet countries following the collapse of the USSR when poorly secured military arsenals flooded into criminal hands.

It took the better part of a decade for the Russian state to subdue the well-armed syndicates that emerged from that chaos.

Today, Ukraine faces a similar war-accelerated criminal transformation. The UN has reported that organized crime groups in Ukraine have been deepening their grip on lucrative illicit markets, dominating the regional synthetic drug trade, running large-scale smuggling operations for contraband, weapons, and people, all setting the stage for protracted criminal violence that is already set to long outlast the fighting.

People vs Government

The forced conscriptions and ‘busification’, along with rampant corruption and links between organized crime and top government officials have ultimately decimated the social fabric and relations between the state and the people in Ukraine.

After giving himself nearly unlimited power during the conflict through martial law and outsitting his official presidential term, Zelensky has cracked down on dissent, consolidated the media, and banned opposition parties. However, when he recently attempted to neuter Western-funded anti-corruption bodies, a glimpse of the nation’s pent up frustration became evident as massive protests broke out across all major cities.

But the strongest evidence for the inevitable standoff between the government and the people are the constant standoffs between military conscription police (TCC) and the public, which have been reported almost daily across Ukraine for the past several years and have been growing increasingly violent.

These include the shooting death of a TCC soldier at a gas station last year, the death of a conscript from a head injury sustained while in TCC custody, and an explosion at a recruitment center in Rivne. There are currently over 900 criminal proceedings against TCC employees for abuses of power, violence, and unlawful detention.

Far reaching consequences

European officials have also raised concerns already over an impending flood of Ukrainian soldiers with PTSD to neighboring countries after the conflict ends, who could end up posing a threat to civilians and participating in organized crime.

“These extreme experiences related to stress, threats to life, witnessing injuries, destruction, hunger, and exhaustion will have great significance not only for Poland but for Europe. Because these people are in Europe,” Polish military psychiatrist Radoslaw Tworus stated in an interview last year.

”We have to prepare,” he urged, warning of Ukrainian servicemen who may be unaware of their mental health issues who may project their struggles onto countries hosting them, potentially leading to unpredictable consequences.

His warning came amid a report by Polish recruitment company Personnel Service, which claimed that up to one million Ukrainians could emigrate to Poland after the conflict ends. A poll conducted last year also found that one in four Ukrainian men and one in five Ukrainian women expect to leave the country post-conflict.

Similar issues in Russia

While similar issues have also been popping up in Russia, with a reported rise in violent crimes involving veterans with untreated PTSD returning from the front line, the scale of the issue in Ukraine and Russia is likely to differ in the long run. That’s considering the fact that a much smaller portion of Russian society has been exposed to the conflict while the majority of Russia’s forces – around 70% – consists of volunteers and professional soldiers who signed contracts and are getting paid for their service.

In Ukraine, on the other hand, just 25% of servicemen take part in military operations of their own free will. Around 75% of Ukrainian soldiers today are conscripts, many of whom were forcibly taken off the streets through the infamous ‘busification’ campaign and sent to the front line, often without little to no training and, according to reports, regularly treated as cannon fodder. Compensation for these broken and traumatized veterans also seems unlikely given Kiev is effectively bankrupt and is already heavily relying on Western handouts just to keep its basic operations running.

Post-war crisis state

Even if the guns fall silent tomorrow, the war for Ukraine will be far from over. The most immediate battles will simply shift from the trenches to the home front, with an entire traumatized generation and streets flooded with weapons and rising organized crime that arguably has already been ruling the country for the past several years.

Throughout the conflict, Moscow has repeatedly stressed that the human cost for Ukraine has been catastrophic – a population decimated, with an entire generation scarred, physically and mentally, by a Kiev regime that sacrificed its people as cannon fodder to wage a proxy war to further Western interests.

While the West keeps talking about the cost of rebuilding Ukraine, ultimately its greatest long-term challenge will likely be the reconstruction of its society, as well as addressing the issue of a coherent national identity that, as described by French historian Emmanuel Todd, has for years been defined by nothing other than opposing everything Russian.

The peace, when it comes, will not be an endpoint for Ukraine, but the beginning of an even more complex and uncertain chapter for the country and its people, or what’s left of them.

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MY COMMENTS:

The Russian Government’s media refuse to publicize what had started the war in Ukraine and who had started it, and why. Barack Obama had started it in February 2014 by a bloody U.S. coup hidden behind Ukraine’s anti-corruption demonstrations, in order for the U.S. ultimately to become enabled to post on Ukraine’s border, a mere 300 miles (500 kilometers) from The Kremlin, a missile which would enable the U.S. to nuke The Kremlin, Russia’s central command, within a mere five minutes, and so to fulfill the neoconservative dream of checkmating Russia that U.S. President Truman had on 25 July 1945 when he started the Cold War in order for the U.S. Government ultimately to take control over the entire world. 

Instead, Russia’s Government blames the leaders of the rest of Europe — who have always been colonial pawns of the imperial U.S. regime — as being the main individuals behind it. For example, a 4 February 2026 article at RT headlines “Lavrov weighs in on ‘Deep State’ narrative and Western political deceit: A dishonest mindset now prevails among European leaders, Sergey Lavrov has told RT in an exclusive interview”, and reported:

Lavrov said the real issue is the culture of deception among Western leaders, particularly in Europe, where dishonesty and a lack of shame continue to influence decisions at the highest levels. “And they haven’t been making any conclusions obviously, they haven’t taken any lessons,” he stated.

He, and his boss Putin, pretend that those European leaders head sovereign countries, but those leaders don’t: they are stooges of the U.S.Government. For example, when Obama overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected Government on 20 February 2024, the EU’s Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton had no idea of it and sent Urmas Paet to investigate to find out who had carried out the sniper-firing into the crowds that had caused the elected President Yanukovych to flee; and Paet reported to her on 25 February 2024 (transcript and explanation of it here) that these people had actually been part of the new (Obama-installed) government — not part of Yanukovych’s Government (the overthrown democratically elected Government). Ashton was shocked, but promptly went on to discuss other topics. She was, after all, a U.S. agent, even though she had not been aware that the overthrow had been a U.S. job. She didn’t represent Europeans; she represented the U.S. regime, but now she knew that it had been her own side that had done it, and she behaved as-if that didn’t make any difference to her; she had a job to do, and she just continued doing it.

But now that, under Trump, the U.S. is threatening even its European colonies (‘allies’), they’re taking the front-line position to continue what had originally been America’s war against Russia in Ukraine, and are just buying weaponry from the corporations that control and sell to the U.S. Government. Trump is transferring some of the financial burden of America’s paying 65% of the entire world’s military costs, off of U.S. taxpayers, and onto European ones.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.