Checkpoint: rehabilitation space for Ukrainian veterans starts its activities in Zaporizhzhya

With EU support, a rehabilitation space for veterans of the Ukrainian army, called ‘Checkpoint’, was opened in Zaporizhzhya in May.

The rehabilitation space for veterans provides free services for veterans and their families. Former servicemen and women and their relatives can receive psychological, legal, recruitment counselling and support from a sports rehabilitation specialist. The ‘Checkpoint’ also has child and teenage spaces.

Psychologists help female and male veterans and their families to “reboot” to a peaceful life, stabilise their emotional state, and harmonise family relationships. Young parents, spouses and female defenders who are planning to become parents can also seek psychological support.

Veterans need psychological support due to instability in their emotional sphere, in particular, aggravated reactions even to insignificant everyday events, as well as feelings of guilt before their comrades-in-arms for not being at the front, the psychologists of the centre explain.

Legal assistance includes a wide range of issues: dismissal or cancellation of contracts with the Armed Forces, obtaining the status and certificate of “participant of combat operations”, social guarantees for veterans and their family members, benefits and compensations, salaries, bonuses and others.

A ‘Business School’, launched within the centre, helps them to find new jobs, opportunities for retraining or learning another profession, and starting and running their own business project.

The centre was established by the public organisation ‘Laboratory of Military and Political Research and Reconstruction’ in partnership with the Open Lithuania Foundation, with financial support from the European Union and the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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Press release