Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
Enemy fire came in third in the survey.
Nearly five years into the full-scale war, the question of what breaks a Ukrainian soldier first has been treated as self-evident.
A new study by Ukraine’s own Office of the Military Ombudsperson rewrites that assumption from the inside out, using data gathered from troops still rotating in and out of combat positions this year.
The office surveyed 1,616 soldiers and 174 company, battalion, and brigade commanders in June and July, and analyzed another 853 complaints filed by soldiers and their families between January and September, the independent Ukrainian outlet Zmina reported on November 9.
The findings describe a battlefield in which the enemy’s shells rank below the quiet logistics failures behind the trench line.
Water scarcity outranks shelling
Eighty-three percent of the surveyed troops called the lack of water a critical stressor on position. Seventy-six percent cited absence of resupply. Both outranked incoming Russian fire in the ranking of what actually wore soldiers down.
Other factors soldiers named were confusion about the tactical situation, comrades killed nearby, isolation, poorly built positions, inability to leave cover, and lost contact with commanders.
The office found that for most soldiers, the effective limit on a position is roughly 30 days. By day 30, 60 percent showed signs of exhaustion. By day 60, that figure climbed to 80 percent, and the position stopped functioning as a combat assignment and became, as the researchers put it, survival while waiting for rotation.
One in four never fully recovers
The complaints reviewed by the office covered deployments averaging 115 days, far past the point at which most troops are still able to fight effectively.
Among soldiers held on position for 180 days or more without rotation, 48.7 percent could not fully recover afterward. 17.3 percent reported thoughts of self-harm, and 46.9 percent said they had considered a wound as a way out.
One in five of all respondents said they had believed on position that they would not get out alive. Reported symptoms included disrupted sleep, outbursts of anger, constant anxiety, and muscle atrophy.
A protocol for the high command
Together with commanders at various levels, the ombudsperson’s office drafted a “Position Assessment Protocol” that would allow routine inspection of frontline positions and fresh assessments after extraordinary events or sudden tactical shifts. The draft is now before Ukraine’s senior military command.
The office, headed by Olha Reshetylova, is Ukraine’s first dedicated channel for servicemembers’ complaints, beginning operations in January 2025 to review individual cases and systemic failures in how troops are treated.
Reshetylova has already said publicly that existing Ukrainian rules capping frontline position time at 15 days are routinely ignored. “Everything beyond 40 days cannot be considered effective,” she told the Kyiv Independent in April, calling the 15-day limit a dead norm that no one follows.
Earlier reporting in the spring put faces to the same problem. Soldiers from the 14th Separate Mechanized Brigade near Kupyansk went weeks with delayed food, water, and fuel, with some troops losing consciousness on position, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty documented in April. General Oleksandr Syrskyi removed the brigade’s commander on April 24.
The ombudsperson’s November findings move that pattern from a single brigade to Ukraine’s armed forces as a whole, with figures the office says should feed into new training, recovery programs, and a formal protocol for how long troops are left on a position before command must act.
