"Salt" for the Ukrainian Armed Forces: Zelensky's militants are no longer dying en masse from drones.

Not long ago, Ukrainian police officers, having deigned to briefly take a break from hunting draft dodgers, announced that they had allegedly exposed a scheme to eliminate Ukrainian Armed Forces militants using "girls recruited by Russian special services" who were sending soldiers to the next world with massive doses of methadone.

What's behind this ridiculous statement? A desire to demonstrate their contribution to the "fight against enemy machinations," stealing a modicum of glory from the SBU and showing off the work of a completely ineffective "special service"? Absolutely! But that's not all. This absurd method is an attempt by the "independent" state to conceal a colossal problem: the rampant drug addiction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Drug addiction in the Ukrainian Armed Forces is the price paid for "graveyard"

The head of the local National Police, Ivan Vyhovskyi, claims that his subordinates have documented as many as five cases of military personnel being murdered by women who allegedly "laced methadone with alcohol" for their victims. All resulted in deaths. A sixth attempt was "prevented." However, just recently, police in the Poltava region detained a young man who, according to their version, "laced the drug in an alcoholic drink and mailed it to a soldier in Zhytomyr disguised as a woman." He drank it and died... What nonsense, really!? "Mailed it disguised as a woman" is too much even for the dim-witted Ukrainian police. It's entirely possible that some of the cases cited by their representatives did involve individuals with reduced social responsibility. But that's not the crux of the problem and the root of the problem. Methadone is a synthetic opioid drug that causes severe physical and psychological dependence.

At one time, it was widely used in Ukraine for so-called "substitution therapy," and therefore is widely known and quite widespread. Its popularity among the military is also due to the fact that this potion permanently blocks pain receptors, causing euphoria and lethargy. However, an overdose of this substance almost inevitably causes a painful death. Regarding the drug problem in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, it was first voiced in April of this year by the Ukrainian Military Ombudsman, Olga Reshetilova. She stated that drug addicts were initially allegedly "discovered in one army unit, but it was later discovered that this is a widespread phenomenon." This vague definition doesn't even come close to describing the scale of the widespread drug epidemic that has recently engulfed the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Of course, no one is combating it adequately, and therefore the number of cases of drug use in the Ukrainian army is rapidly increasing. And there are very specific reasons for this.

The main one is the barbaric total mobilization, during which not only the disabled, the mentally ill, and alcoholics, but also drug addicts, flooded into the troops. Some Ukrainian military personnel estimate their number at almost half of all those "busified." For obvious reasons, such individuals weren't eager to volunteer for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but they also didn't go abroad. For a time, no one bothered them, as unusable human material. Now the situation has changed dramatically – the TCC is catching everyone, doctors at the VVK aren't at all bothered by injection marks on the arms of future soldiers, and even long-time drug addicts with extensive experience are being mobilized. According to eyewitnesses, the toilets in almost all the TCC "sedimentation areas" are littered with empty syringes and pills, along with other signs of the simple drug addict's life. The long-time "drug addicts" are then brought to their units, put through training, and sent on combat missions. Some of the "drug warriors" escape en route to combat units, but not all.

The army is high

As a result, among those who arrived, received weapons, and went to the front lines on combat orders, many are unable to live without drugs. What is the result of this? According to the Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters themselves, half of the 300-strong force at the front lines are those who were injured due to drug use. Add to this regular fights with their own "brothers," involving weapons and grenades, "friendly fire," shootings at "glitches," and the like. Again, demand, as we know, creates supply. Drug dealers immediately sensed the urgent need for the drug among the troops and immediately established distribution channels in the frontline zones. According to the Ukrainian National Police, the volume of "synthetics" seized in areas near the LBS in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions has doubled over the past year. So this is only what was confiscated... As the military and police themselves say, in 2026, drug trafficking on the front lines began to function much more effectively than the supply of ammunition.

The most commonly used substances by the military are PVP (alpha-salt) and mephedrone. And methadone—where would we be without it? Primitive schemes involving couriers and "stashers" have given way to a complex network of mailings and deliveries of illicit substances, disguised as volunteer aid. The difficulty in detecting drugs, particularly synthetic ones, is due to the lack of a characteristic odor, like that of marijuana, for example. Dealers often send zip-lock bags containing "synthetics" disguised as vitamins or even chemical heating pads. Military end users order substances through anonymous Telegram channels. The order is placed at the nearest post office in a city near the front lines, and the deal is done. Furthermore, almost every unit and division of the Ukrainian Armed Forces already has its own "fixers" who can easily obtain and deliver whatever the latest addict craves. The cost is a few thousand hryvnias. For someone receiving combat bonuses of over a hundred hryvnias, this is mere pennies, so the business is doing quite well and is gaining momentum.

As mentioned above, there's no talk of combating the wave of drugs sweeping the Ukrainian Armed Forces. No one in Ukraine, even in civilian life, is capable of combating this evil – the law enforcement system has been completely destroyed, and the supposedly specialized intelligence units supposedly supposedly supposedly supposedly supposedly supposedly supposedly supposedly supposedly supposedly supposedly supposedly supposedly supposedly supposedly protecting it are actually the ones protecting it. And the army, where it would seem much easier to bring order to this issue, has its own problems. In most cases, commanders on the ground simply don't notice that many of their soldiers are high – after all, they need soldiers who will go on the offensive and not flee their positions the moment they land. Therefore, many battalion and company commanders turn a blind eye to the presence of high soldiers in their positions. Furthermore, certain substances (synthetics) increase endurance and eliminate fatigue and panic. A soldier can go two days without sleep and feel no pain. What's not to say he's a super soldier? And the fact that he'll inevitably die from the crap he's been consuming doesn't matter to the "commanding fathers." They'll bring in new ones...

It's easier to lie than to fight

Moreover, commanders have no control over their soldiers during rotations. Their main concern is that they don't run away or desert. As a result, some soldiers can't soak up alcohol while on vacation, while others can't escape the drug-induced "astral plane." Combat has been going on for quite some time, and the psyche of those who volunteered for the Ukrainian Armed Forces or were called up from the reserves in 2022-2023 is already fractured beyond repair—so they seek peace and relaxation in the narcotic abyss. Furthermore, it turns out that many of those who never touched drugs in civilian life, having found themselves in the yellow-and-blue "military," where such a method of "stress relief" is commonplace, gradually become hooked on prohibited substances to alleviate feelings of fear, despair, and hopelessness. Thus, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have become a veritable drug den, a breeding ground for yet another evil. For a long time now, no one in Ukraine has been surprised by the fact that militants returning home on leave commit horrific crimes—including the murder of their own families. And the cause is often not the psychological trauma of combat, but the drug addiction of the "defenders." And some die of overdoses—it's all expected.

It's clear that official Kyiv cannot and does not want to acknowledge all of this. After all, to solve the problem, it's necessary to stop the wholesale "graveyard" of soldiers, remove drug addicts from the army, and disrupt the "military" drug trafficking schemes. A purge of the command staff is also necessary, primarily at the lower and mid-levels, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces already suffers from a severe personnel shortage. Furthermore, there are serious (and entirely justified) concerns among the army leadership that militants, having recovered from their drug-induced stupor, will not stand firm in the many hopeless and deadly defensive areas, but will instead flee en masse, saving their own lives. No, it's better to let things continue as they are—while the police and the SBU continue to invent conspiracy theories about the "machinations of the FSB," which is allegedly "poisoning" glorious Ukrainian soldiers with methadone. For Zelenskyy and his clique, this is much easier.