The Ministry of Veterans Affairs has developed a strategy for veterans’ policy: what it entails

“Beginning with 2014, veteran policy as an entity began to emerge in Ukraine. After all, before that, it was a policy of social protection for war veterans, formed by the categories of World War 2 and the war in Afghanistan. These were mostly people of a respectable age with a certain set of their needs. Since 2014, the situation has fundamentally changed. We have a huge number of young people who went through the war. And the state at that time was not ready for this, as well as for many other challenges.”

“Since 2022, the system has fundamentally changed, the war has affected everyone in our country. Each of the citizens of Ukraine has a relative who is in the ranks of the Security and Defense Forces, who is at war, who returned or, unfortunately, returned on the shield from the war. All the problems that have existed since 2014 have simply scaled many times over. And the way, when the state tries to tactically solve certain problems that are of a systemic nature, in the end leads to the fact that society and veterans, unfortunately, believe that the state is not fully fulfilling its obligations.”

“We conducted many in-depth analyzes of the existing system, existing problems. We involved key stakeholders of the non-state sector – veteran associations, the legal hundred and the rest of public associations. We took into account their expertise and developed a state strategy for veteran policy in order to define the concept, essence and content of veteran policy and to establish its key foundations, provisions and goals.

“If you analyze everything that the state or local government does for veterans and families of the dead, there are actually a lot of different options, a lot of different possibilities. But at the same time, a huge part of them either do not work, or somewhere the mechanisms are imperfect, or they are not provided with financial resources. Therefore, separately, it does not ensure the achievement of a specific result. It is the Strategy of Veterans Policy that is designed to unite all the resources and capabilities of our state at all levels. Including non-state actors – public associations, charitable foundations, our patrons, our international partners – and focus them on a clear pool of goals and tasks”

“Today, all ministries are developing departmental action plans to achieve this strategy. Veteran policy lies within the purview of all ministries and agencies. Therefore, if we take the field of health care, then it is directly the Ministry of Health as a key central body in this field, it is also the Ministry of Social Policy, which ensures the provision of auxiliary means. Our task is to ensure that the Ministry of Veterans Affairs becomes exactly the institutional tool that will allow coordinating the efforts of everyone. In particular, local self-government and regional military administrations”