Ludmilla Boiko can’t sleep. Every night, before going to bed, she takes pills that eventually shift her into unconsciousness. “No normal person can go through this and come out without traces,” she said.
Boiko knows better than most the psychological effects Russia’s invasion has had on people in Ukraine. As the director of a long-standing Ukrainian centre of psychology in Borodyanka, a town north of the capital Kyiv which was pummelled by Russian bombs and then occupied, Boiko is at the forefront of one of Ukraine’s biggest civilian challenges – helping a traumatised population cope with the horrors of a war that shows no sign of ending.
