The Ministry of Veterans, Internally Displaced Persons and Internally Displaced Persons does not have data on suicides among participants in the fighting in Donbass, because they were classified by the SSU.
The Ukrayinska Pravda news and analysis website reported this.
In response to a request from correspondents, the ministry replied that they did not and should not possess information about the number of soldiers who committed suicide. In 2017, the State Service for War Veterans and participants in the antiterrorist operation, the successor of which is the Ministry of Veterans, tried to get the data.
However, the Ministry of Defense replied that such information is “secret”. Such a status on suicide statistics was imposed by the order of the Security Service of Ukraine since 2005.
We shall remind you that in 2017, Ukraine created a register of counter-terrorism soldiers who committed suicide. In April 2018, the former head of the Verkhovna Rada committee for veterans, combatants, participants in the anti-terrorist operation and people with disabilities, Oleksandr Tretyakov, said that more than 1,000 participants in the anti-terrorist operation committed suicide. After that, he said that there were no exact statistics on suicides among veterans. At the same time, Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoli Mathios said that at least 554 military men had committed suicide since the beginning of the fighting in Donbas.