Surge of childhood diabetes due to wartime stress

Young Ukrainians are increasingly being diagnosed with stress-related illnesses. Doctors and families point to the prolonged strain of bombings as a key contributing factor.

Editor’s Note: War takes a toll on our team not only psychologically, but physically too.

Despite a decent diet and constant exercise, I’ve had problems with high cholesterol due to stress! As you’ll see in this story: blame the cortisol.

But even after sleepless nights under shelling, we continue our work to ensure Ukrainian voices are not silenced. Support our team that keeps going, no matter what!

Yurii and his mom, Olena, in the Carpathians.

“I got upset when the doctor told me I had diabetes,” said Yurii. “Because uneaten sweets are waiting for me at home, and we've already bought lemonade for New Year's.”

Yurii is 16 years old, and every day he starts with a long-acting insulin injection. Later throughout the day, ten minutes before each meal, he measures his blood sugar levels, calculates the amount of carbohydrates he will get from food, and injects the appropriate dose of insulin.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that changes your life forever and can be triggered by infections or, as it is in Yurii's case, by severe stress – especially after what happened to his brother.

Chronic stress has been rising among Ukrainians since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, as Moscow continues to shell the country daily. The continuous sleepless nights and the fear of being hit by a drone or missile are affecting both the mental and physical health of the people in Ukraine.

In June 2025, Russians increased the number of drones and missiles launched at Ukraine increased by 60 percent, according to Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In addition, June saw the highest number of civilian deaths since April 2022 as a result of military actions: 232 people.

The invisible effects are compounding: Ukrainian children have begun to experience health conditions that could affect the rest of their lives.

Statistics show a rise in the number of patients with type 1 diabetes in the frontline Kharkiv region, and the number of people diagnosed with diabetes in general is also on the rise across the country.

Before the invasion, Yurii lived with his parents in the central Ukrainian city of Cherkasy. They tried to get out of town every weekend — whether that meant going fishing or mushroom-picking in the forest.

“Children need to breathe fresh air,” Olena, Yurii's mother, told The Counteroffensive with a nostalgic smile on her face.

She begins the conversation by saying, “I am the mother of two wonderful sons.”

Yurii has a brother, Volodymyr, also known as Vova, who is 10 years older and who looked after Yurii from an early age.

"We walked all over Cherkasy together, went to parks, squares, the Dnipro River, and he treated me to McDonald's. Vova [a nickname for Volodymyr] always told me, ‘When you grow up, we'll go out with girls together. ’ And Vova loved everything related to the army," said Yurii.

When Olena talks about her eldest son, her voice begins to tremble.

Vova died on May 3, 2022, while defending Mariupol at Azovstal, a strategic steel factory that was besieged by Russian forces for almost three months, a famous last stand.

He died after his car rolled onto an enemy mine.

The family only learned about his death six months later.

Photo of Vova from Azovstal.

"One day, Vova's commander called me, introduced himself, and asked how I was doing. I replied, 'Do you know where my son is? Wasn't he in captivity with you?’ He told me that Vova had died on May 3 and asked, ‘Didn't you know?’ It felt like half my heart had been cut out of my chest at that moment," remembered Olena.

Volodymyr was only buried in February 2023. After the tragedy, Olena began to have health problems: she constantly felt weak, and eventually doctors had to remove her thyroid gland so that she could get better.

In the fall of 2023, months after Volodymyr’s funeral, the family went to the Carpathians for a break. During the trip, Olena noticed that Yurii, then 14 years old, was drinking more water than usual and had lost a significant amount of weight. Despite being naturally thin and 1.74 meters tall (5 feet 9 inches), he weighed just 45 kilograms (99.2 pounds).

“Yurii took his brother's death very hard. It wasn't that he cried a lot, but as if something inside him had burned out,” said Olena.

Yurii and Olena returned to Cherkasy and went to see the doctors. While Olena had developed a problem with her thyroid, everything seemed normal in Yurii.

But when the doctor routinely tested Yurii’s blood sugar levels, they found he had developed type 1 diabetes.

“It felt like I was beaten to death with feet, after all the horror we had already gone through,” said Olena.

Many autoimmune diseases of the endocrine system occur in childhood or young adulthood, as these are periods of active growth and hormonal changes, said Natalia Pogadaeva, head of the endocrinology department at Okhmatdyt, Ukraine’s largest pediatric hospital, which was hit by a missile strike last year.

Genetics plays a significant role in the onset of diabetes, as in other autoimmune diseases. However, the trigger for their onset is usually stress, she added. The following six months after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the number of patients with diabetes and other immune diseases surged, she added.

Due to full-scale Russian invasion and the displacement of the Ukrainian population both within Ukraine and abroad, it is very difficult to determine the actual extent of the increase in diabetes, Pogadayeva says.

“Children who lived in Kyiv could have gone abroad and realized they were sick, or vice versa: a child moved from Kherson to Kyiv and is being treated in Kyiv, not where they lived,” she added.

Still, some statistics hint at the broader toll. For example, 398 patients with type 1 diabetes under the age of 18 were registered in the first 9 months of 2023 in the Kharkiv region, a frontline region in the northeast of Ukraine. During the same period in 2024, the number had already increased to 501 patients – a more than 25 percent increase.

According to the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, 531,200 people were diagnosed with different types of diabetes in 2023, the first full year of the full-scale invasion. In 2022, the number was 489,934 - an 8 percent increase.

Many of the children who went to Okhmatdyt to get treated had either survived Russia’s occupation, had experienced the aggression firsthand, or had evacuated from Mariupol or Bakhmut, Pogadaeva said.

“At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, among other things, logistics were also greatly changed,” said Pogadaeva, the head of the endocrinology department at Okhmatdyt.

Children who already had diabetes had a hard time accessing insulin and the supplies needed to measure their blood sugar. As a result, they had to be hospitalized.

Diabetes can have severe complications if not taken care of properly. Uncontrolled blood sugar can damage blood vessels, which are present in every organ of the body. If affected, the kidneys, the limbs, and the eyes are the first to suffer. In the long run, it can lead to kidney failure, loss of sensitivity, loss of vision, and even to the amputation of limbs.

Pogadaeva explains that our bodies have a stress hormone called cortisol, which can be released during periods of prolonged stress, such as experiencing daily shelling, night-time air raid alarms, and lack of sleep — all situations Ukrainian children have been experiencing for the past three years.

The release of cortisol leads to uncontrolled fluctuations in blood sugar levels, she added.

Yurii will start college this year. Olena fears that having to prepare for exams will add to the stress of the war. She said that while at her house, they have adapted to a diet appropriate for the disease.

Yet Yurii’s blood sugar levels are still fluctuating.

They relocated to a village near the regional centre to be closer to nature. There, Yurii has his workshop and chickens, for which he recently built a drinking trough.

The family fondly remembers his older brother, Volodymyr, who was posthumously awarded the Order for Courage, a state award given by the President of Ukraine for heroism shown in emergencies.

Yurii’s chickens.

“It's hard to say that anything in our lives has changed significantly because of the illness. Now it's just a way of our life.

My husband is only sometimes dissatisfied, saying, ‘I don't want porridge, I don't want salads. When will we have varenyky [Ukrainian dumplings]?’ But that's it, if the child can't have it, then no one can,” Olena said.

NEWS OF THE DAY:

By: Mariana Lastovyria

AZERBAIJAN TO FILE LAWSUIT AGAINST RUSSIA: Azerbaijan plans to take legal action against Russia over the downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane in December 2024, President Ilham Aliyev announced.

Seven months later, the country has yet to receive any response from Moscow regarding responsibility for the crash near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan. The Azerbaijani investigation claims that Russian air defense mistakenly targeted the aircraft while attempting to shoot down a Ukrainian plane over Chechnya (now a Russian republic). 38 people were killed.

Aliyev denied claims that the plane could have been downed by a Ukrainian drone. The aircraft's fuselage was hit twice and heavily perforated.

This marks another rupture in relations between Russia and Azerbaijan, who had remained allies after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s a sign of Putin’s gradual loss of influence over the Caucasus region, which Moscow had dominated for the past 200 years.

UKRAINIAN BOXER AGAIN A WORLD CHAMPION: Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk became a two-time undisputed heavyweight champion of the world after defeating British fighter Daniel Dubois in a London bout overnight.

After five rounds, the 38-year-old Ukrainian knocked out his opponent, solidifying his status following victories in 2024. Usyk is for now undefeated in his professional career. He has 24 wins and no losses.

This victory is symbolic for Ukraine, as despite the war, Ukrainians continue to show they will not bow to anyone. Sport has thus become a vital part of Ukraine’s cultural diplomacy as a way to promote resilience to the world.

RUSSIA RESTRICTS FOREIGN MESSENGERS: Putin has instructed the government to develop new restrictions on foreign messaging apps from ‘unfriendly countries,’ according to Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service. The main candidate for potential blocking is WhatsApp, owned by Meta, which has been declared extremist in Russia. Telegram, owned by Russian-born Pavel Durov, is also under threat.

Currently, almost 100 million people in Russia use the WhatsApp messenger, including local officials and business representatives. As a result, citizens will be forced to switch to domestic alternatives, making Russians even more susceptible to government control.

DOG OF WAR:

Meet Tina Karol – Yurii’s dog. Tina was named after Ukrainian pop singer Tina Karol. Probably because of her long and lush coat. Tina loves long walks and tasty bones. Once, she tried to take a bone from another dog in Yurii's family, Bagira, a sheepdog several times larger than her. Since then, they have not been friends because Bagira has held a grudge against her.

Stay safe out there.

Best,
Tanya