Hug for Heroes: Two Weeks of Recovery, Reintegration and Quiet Courage
Sep 3, 2025
From 18 to 31 August, Help Ukraine Gothenburg (HUG) hosted the pilot of Hug for Heroes — an international recovery and training camp in Sweden for Ukrainian veterans and their families. For fourteen days, a carefully designed program of therapy, movement, and family work was interspersed with simple human moments: a fishing line in still water, a walk through a Viking village, a shared meal beside the sea, and a Paralympian speaking about purpose.
This was never intended to be a spa or a short-term comfort. It was — and is — a practical methodology for reintegration: a program that works with body, mind, and family in parallel so that recovery can become lasting resilience and, ultimately, leadership.
“Reintegration doesn’t begin in a clinic. It begins where a person is seen, heard, and supported again.” – Rodion Hryhoryan, NATO-certified military psychologist, Hug for Heroes program coordinator
Hug for Heroes was built around a single conviction: that healing must be whole. The program’s core elements are interdependent and intentionally delivered every day:
This is not therapy in isolation; it is training, practice and the lived rehearsal of life after war.
Not every therapeutic breakthrough happens in a therapy room. Some happen on a lake.
A small group left the camp to visit a reconstructed Viking village. The site offered a sense of perspective — a cultural, historical space where participants could be explorers again, take in new stories and, for a few hours, step outside the identity of “patient” or “wounded.” The village visit became a symbol of rediscovery: of curiosity, of stepping toward the world rather than away from it.
Fishing trips on Swedish waters were another unforgettable element. Several participants had long hoped simply to cast a line again. For many, the act of waiting, the rhythm of casting and the quiet reward of a catch offered a kind of therapy words could not replace.
“Fishing gave me peace I had been searching for since the war,” one participant said simply. “It was not about the catch, but about silence, patience, and being present.”
A highlight of the program was the visit from David Lega — Swedish Paralympian, former MEP and a public figure who speaks openly about resilience and purpose. David met participants, shared his personal story, introduced adaptive sport practices and reminded the room of a simple truth: we are all humans; we need to be needed.
He helped lead adaptive sports sessions using equipment generously donated by AD Fitness, and he physically demonstrated that adaptive sport is not charity — it is inclusion. The practical demonstrations allowed participants to try specialized equipment and experience what accessible sport feels like: equal, empowering, forward-looking.
At the end of the day, David signed a Ukrainian flag for the veterans; they signed one for him. The exchange was small, tender and deeply symbolic — a mutual recognition of resilience and respect that lingered long after the autograph dries.
Fillauer Europe — a leader in orthotic and prosthetic innovation — joined the camp to present the latest high-performance prosthetic technologies. For many participants who use prosthetics due to injuries sustained in the war, this workshop was practical and profound.
Participants had hands-on time with several prosthetic models. They could test movement, compare functionality and envision what improved mobility could mean in daily life back home. The Fillauer sessions were not theoretical: they were concrete offers of improved daily function and autonomy.
Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA) facilitators Anastasiia Klonova and Olga Yershova led a workshop that began with one question: What does “reintegration” mean to you?
As answers accumulated, it became clear that reintegration is not a single policy or a therapy model. It is a long, sometimes uneven process of rebuilding work, relationships and identity. The FBA session reinforced that reintegration requires both individual care and community systems: employment, education, social support and reduced stigma.
These practical conversations feed directly into the program’s leadership module: what veterans can do, once supported, to support others.
Work with families produced some of the clearest evidence that this model works.
Mykola and Kateryna Hradnov-Savytskyi, who attended together, offered a short, powerful testament:
“This trauma isn’t mine alone — it belongs to both of us. Throughout my rehabilitation, Kateryna never left my side. She became my anchor, one of the precious few for whom I would give my life during the war. Our partners are our support. While we fought on the front lines, they fought to hold our families — and our country — together.”
That reflection sums up why the program includes partners: trauma becomes relational, and recovery must restore those relationships. Partners learn tools for communication, for pacing difficult conversations and for co-creating a safe life that can stand up to the pressures veterans face.
Pavlo, another participant, captured the subtle but vast change the camp made:
“I thought I had forgotten what it meant to be grateful. But this journey restored the meaning of gratitude to me. Thanks to the program, I met wonderful people who saw me not as disabled, but first and foremost as a human being. That is priceless.”
The camp’s cultural and civic moments reinforced that support for veterans extends beyond clinical care. On Flag Day (23 August) and Independence Day (24 August), participants gathered with the blue-and-yellow flag — a tactile reminder of why they have endured so much and why community matters.
The program received public recognition: a warm civic welcome from Gothenburg’s leadership, including Chairman Aslan Akbas, affirmed that local institutions see the value in long-term reintegration work. Coverage on Swedish Radio — including an on-air segment with our co-founder Kateryna Aleksandrova — helped amplify the message that veterans’ recovery is a public, not private, responsibility.
Tjörnbro Arena provided a quiet, comfortable place where the program could run with dignity and rhythm. Local volunteers, translators and Swedish families welcomed participants into small acts of kindness — rides, fishing assistance, extra blankets, the occasional warm pie.
AD Fitness made adaptive equipment available; Fillauer gave prosthetic access; FBA provided reintegration frameworks; local civic leaders provided political support. Each partner contributed practical resources that turned intention into action.
Hug for Heroes is not about creating dependent beneficiaries. It is about enabling agency. The program prepares participants to return home with practical tools — peer-to-peer facilitation skills, community engagement frameworks and leadership practice — so they can be first responders in their own towns: the person a neighbor turns to when the nights are dark, the mentor who can model recovery for the next veteran who arrives at a clinic alone.
Leadership is not a rank. It is impact. It is responsibility. It is the courage to hold others when you are still learning to stand yourself.
The final evening was tender: a farewell gathering where people looked back — at the small steps and the quiet breakthroughs — and forward, to what comes next. For many, the camp was fuel for a longer journey. Recovery continues, not as a neat checklist but as a lived practice that will be tested in the months ahead.
The program’s designers are clear: this pilot proves the model. Now it must be scaled, refined and made accessible to more veterans and their partners in Ukraine.
The pilot showed what is possible when clinical care, physical practice and family work come together. If you want to help bring more veterans and families to this program:
Every contribution turns into a place at the table, a seat on the bus, a rod cast into still water — and sometimes into the first breath of hope.
Hug for Heroes is not an event. It is a methodology that insists recovery includes the body, the mind and the family. It proved, in two weeks on the Swedish coast, that dignity and practical care can change the arc of a life. It proved that small acts — a speech from an inspiring Paralympian, a test of a prosthetic, a fishing trip — can have reverberations home in Ukraine that matter.
As Pavlo said, the greatest gifts cannot be measured in money.
What we can measure are the tools veterans now carry: new ways to talk, new ways to move, and new ways to lead.
We’ll keep sharing stories from the camp in the days ahead — because recovery is a road, not a single step. This road begins here, together.
contact@hug.ngo
Phone
+46 72 013 81 98
Address
Bankogatan 61, 414 80, Göteborg.
