The ‘anniversary effect’: Ukrainians live by a trauma calendar
As Feb. 24 approaches, Ukrainians feel it on a physical level—with the sudden onset of insomnia, anxiety, and appetite loss. They’re dealing with a phenomenon that pops up near the war anniversary.
Editor’s note:
The war in Ukraine has been going on for nearly four years, and every day brings new challenges and news. The Counteroffensive follows what is happening around the country daily and reports on the most important developments.
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Natalia wakes up in the middle of the night to check the time. The screen shows the year 2014.
She blinks, and the digits slowly return to normal.
Outside, it is February 2026. But she is living by a calendar that lags twelve years behind.
“I turn into a function, into a robot. My brain doesn’t care what year it is now — for my brain, these [February] days are simply 2014,” said Natalia Kolosovska, who has been suffering the ‘anniversary effect’ for more than a decade аfter Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time.
Natalia lives through something each February — the annual reaction to the anniversary of a traumatic event.
The beginning of the full-scale war on February 24th, 2022 became a trauma for millions of Ukrainians; most of them woke up unexpectedly to explosions, shocking news alerts, or calls from relatives saying the war had begun.
Some had to pack their entire lives into suitcases and flee their homes, while others waited in terror, fearing that Russian troops could reach their towns.
Year after year, Ukrainians face what is known as the ‘anniversary effect.’ It involves reliving difficult and distressing emotions as the date of a traumatic event approaches, and it’s not limited to only February 24th — it can last for several days or even weeks.
This happens because the body remembers its response to the event or traumatic period, and it may unconsciously reproduce it each year.
For people abroad it might feel like Ukrainians should have adapted to the war already, but the reality is that the whole nation is going through cyclical retraumatization.
The anniversary effect is an example of how trauma embeds itself in the body and permanently alters the calendars we live by.
“I don’t remember what I ate or drank a month ago, but what happened during those days, I remember as if it were yesterday,” said Natalia.
The winter of 2014 was no less difficult for Ukrainians than 2022 would later be. That was when the country was shaken by the Revolution of Dignity, as millions took to the streets demanding European integration. They were protesting against Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych, who was steering the country toward authoritarianism.
In Kyiv alone, up to a million people gathered on the central square of Maidan Nezalezhnosti at the peak of the protests. On January 22, 2014, snipers killed the first demonstrators. By the end of February, more than a hundred people were dead. Russia exploited the political instability, moving to annex Crimea and launch its occupation of Donbas.
From the Lviv region, then 19-year-old Natalia followed these events as they unfolded. She was far from the occupied territories, but she experienced their loss as if it were her own.
Since childhood, she said, she had felt a sense of danger coming from Russia. In school, she wrote essays about the Chechen war after watching documentaries about Russian war crimes there. At the age of 10, she asked her mother: “Why has no one in our family served?”
Her brother simply did not want to join the military, and her father had health issues. She recalls thinking even then: “I don’t want to do math exercises either, but I still do them.”
When the Russian threat to Ukraine became more real, Natalia’s parents told her that Crimea and Donbas had “never truly been Ukrainian;” that they “could be traded away” in exchange for an illusory peace.
She felt isolated, and over time this developed into what is known as the anniversary effect, relived year after year around the dates of traumatic events.
“A psychiatrist once explained something very simple to me. Everything that once existed within your family has spilled over onto a national level and your brain just said: ‘Now it’s everywhere,’” Natalia said.
She suddenly understood why she had been experiencing the anniversary effect for the past decade, despite being far from the epicenter of events. Feb. 24, 2022 added another layer, making the entire month unbearable for Natalia.
The anniversary effect is not always tied to war. It can be associated, for example, with the death of a loved one, a car accident, or even a divorce. Among Americans, anniversary reactions linked to the September 11 terrorist attacks are widespread, even among those who did not directly witness the events.
“If a trauma hasn’t been processed, it is stored as if it is happening right now… During an anniversary, it resurfaces in the unconscious as though the situation is unfolding again in the present. That’s why we feel fear, the urge to cry, or experience reactions we can’t fully explain, as if nothing is happening, yet we are anxious and our stress levels rise,” explained psychologist Vita Bakovska.
It might be a season, a certain temperature, a smell, or a sound. If someone lost a loved one at a specific age, they may experience a similar reaction when they themselves reach that age — it can simply be the context, Bakovska said.
The anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion carries an added layer of turmoil because Ukrainians are still living through the traumatic event and are thus stuck in a state of stress as the war continues.
It’s a collective trauma that has affected people on a massive scale. So even if someone does not personally experience an anniversary effect, they can be ‘emotionally infected’ by others, Bakovska explained.
But Ukraine is not unique in experiencing a mass anniversary effect due to war trauma.
“To this day, when the anniversary of the August war comes, I feel it. There’s a specific anxiety…And there is a terrible feeling I cannot describe or explain rationally. It’s as if the body itself remembers,” said Mariam Lomsadze, a Georgian woman who lives just steps away from the territories Russia occupied in 2008.
The war caught her when she was just 8, in her native village of Nikozi in Georgia. Russia invaded Mariam’s country under the pretext of ‘protecting Russians’ in the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, similar to how the war in Ukraine began.
Mariam did not even realize it was a war at first, she said. Her village bordered South Ossetia, where separatists often held military exercises. So when the first gunfire broke out, the children paid little attention — until the sky turned red with bombs.
She had to flee to the nearby city of Gori, which would go on to become one of the hardest hit by Russian bombardment. People buried their dead in their own yards because they couldn’t reach the cemetery. Mariam’s family received news by phone of more and more people being killed in her village.
“We spent two nights hiding in a basement. We sat there, all of us, trembling with fear… there were cucumbers, and we couldn’t even eat them properly because there was no water,” Mariam recalled.
Nearly 20 years have passed since the war in Georgia, but the memories still catch up with Mariam, especially as the anniversary approaches.
Overall, the anniversary effect can manifest on several levels, according to Bakovska. The first is emotional, which presents as unexplained anxiety, irritability, low mood, aggression, or heightened sensitivity. It can also appear on a cognitive level, when intrusive memories surface.
“We may find ourselves sitting in anticipation of a catastrophe, repeating the same thoughts over and over again. This is called rumination. In simple terms, it’s like chewing gum: you keep chewing on the same thoughts and can’t let them go,” Bakovska explained.
On a physical level, it may involve insomnia, panic attacks, or flare-ups of chronic conditions. Behaviorally, as the psychologist noted, people may try to avoid reminders of the trauma and withdraw into isolation.
“Some people try to look away and forget, but I’m the opposite — in that period I actually go back and look at the photographs and the videos from that time. Somehow, doing that makes me calmer. I feel obligated to look at them, so I never forget what Russia did,” Mariam said.
Meanwhile, Natalia feels empty as the tragic anniversaries approach. She feels nothing at all because, for her, the realization of how many people are no longer alive is more than her psyche can carry. In 2015–2016, she attended many funerals for people killed by Russia, whom she did not know, simply to be able to cry. There, she said, her grief at least felt valid.
In February, it becomes especially difficult for her to fall asleep. She lives in a constant, high-alert state, bracing for danger. Thunder makes her flinch; it reminds her of shelling.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion, she has also stopped eating green apples because, for some reason, they remind her of tanks. This month, she operates on autopilot — eating, working, going through her daily routines.
To make sense of her experience, Natalia writes down what she feels before later transforming it into prose or poetry.
And as Natalia sees it, one of the best ways to cope with the anniversary effect is to find people with similar experiences.
“For those who haven’t lived through this, it is pathologically difficult and sometimes impossible to understand,” Natalia said. “Not because they are bad or cruel, or somehow different, but because their scale of pain is different from ours.”
Editor’s note:
The war in Ukraine has been going on for nearly four years, and every day brings new challenges and news. The Counteroffensive follows what is happening around the country daily and reports on the most important developments.
Our team works under any conditions, in the cold, without electricity or stable internet. But we continue our work so that you receive reliable information.
Your subscription helps us provide backup power and warm conditions for the team. Support our work. Upgrade to a paid subscription today.
NEWS OF THE DAY
By Myroslava Tanska-Vikulova
Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.
RUSSIA REFUSES TO REMOVE VICTORY BANNER FROM EMBASSY IN SEOUL: In Seoul, a 15-meter long banner reading “Victory will be ours” in Russian appeared on the building of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in South Korea a few days before the four year anniversary of the full-scale invasion. This slogan was originally used during the Second World War, but recently has been used with reference to Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine.
Despite South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanding the banner’s removal and claiming that this was a violation of diplomatic conventions, Russia has refused.
RUSSIA PROVIDES IRAN WITH AIR DEFENSE IN SECRET €500M DEAL: Iran has concluded a secret €500 million agreement with Russia to restore its air defenses which were damaged by last year’s Israeli attacks, the Financial Times reports. The systems were requested by Iran in July 2025,
According to the outlet, deliveries are planned for 2027–2029, though Iran may have already received some of these systems. This deal likely has been a way for Russia to repair relations with Iran after it abandoned its ally during Iran’s 12-day war with Israel in 2025, a former US official told the FT.
GREECE COULD BECOME KEY ROUTE FOR US LNG AHEAD OF RUSSIAN GAS BAN: As the EU moves towards a total ban on Russian gas supplies by 2027, Greece is positioning itself as the southern gateway for liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports, predominantly from the US, the FT reports. Before the full-scale invasion Russia supplied about 40 per cent of the EU’s gas, by 2024 Russia supplied only 11 per cent – this gap has been filled largely by US LNG.
The main LNG terminal on the island of Revithoussa moves gas north to the Balkans and beyond. The system was set up after 2022 Russia suspended pipeline gas supplies to Bulgaria after the country refused to pay in roubles.
Demand for long-term supplies is growing, with LNG buyers already booking slots for shipments through Revithoussa until 2040, viewing Greece as a strategic energy hub.
DOG OF WAR:
This pack of dogs often appears on Khreshchatyk and attracts people’s attention. One of the pups, Mitya, often lags behind the others, and the owner has to make sure he doesn’t fall behind.
Stay safe out there.
Best,
Mariana
pressure of war affect the home front, too. God protect Ukraine, please
Beautiful and tragic poem, Natalya. Thank you for this piece, Counteroffensive.