More on the Future of Russia and Some Good News

Russia has veterans who have come back from the front. Like all war veterans, more than a few have issues with PTSD. This is not necessarily a problem exclusive to Russia. We have veterans with PTSD as well.

We now have state-by-state data sheets on veteran suicide. We have also tried to normalize this in the sense that reporting mental issues with mental health after service is not perceived as a weakness — or at least as much of a weakness as it once was. We need to do a better job, still. We are in a very different place than even the Vietnam era when even films portrayed veterans as dangerous; see The Deer Hunter for a good example.

While the film is considered a classic, some depictions of veterans have been critiqued through a more modern lens. Since I write from time to time about Lobo and our training adventures, I realize that service dogs also help vets who are currently dealing with quite serious PTSD. This is just one of the outfits that trains dogs.

So, while we are dealing with a generation of veterans who have PTSD and we work to reintegrate them into society, this is how Russian veterans are described:

Hundreds of thousands of hardened people, who have been through the meat grinder of war, are returning to Russia from the front. People whose psyche could not always…