The Role of Pets in Preserving the Emotional and Spiritual Wellbeing of Ukrainian Residents During Russian Hostilities

Journal of Religion and Health https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-022-01669-4 ORIGINAL PAPER The Role of Pets in Preserving the Emotional and Spiritual Wellbeing of Ukrainian Residents During Russian Hostilities Miliutina Kateryna1 · Andrey Trofimov1 · Zelenin Vsevolod2 · Andrushchenko Tetiana2 · Karamushka Liudmyla3 Accepted: 6 September 2022 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022 Abstract This paper examines the role of pets in preserving the emotional and spiritual wellbeing of Ukrainian Residents during Russian Hostilities. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which resulted in a huge number of refugees, both in the country and outside the country. This, in turn, has caused pet owners to rethink their priorities in many ways. This paper is focused on the influence of these animals and relationships with them on maintaining the emotional state and the decision-making process of the Ukrainian residents during the war. In addition, the functions that pets perform in families were considered: educational, reproductive, leisure, etcetera. In Ukraine, pets are considered family members, so many families refused to leave their homeland because they could not leave their cats and dogs alone. Thus, there was/is no mass abandonment or killing of animals in Ukraine during the war. Keywords Pets · Russo-Ukrainian war · Evacuation · Emotional and spiritual wellbeing · Family system * Andrey Trofimov Miliutina Kateryna Zelenin Vsevolod Andrushchenko Tetiana Karamushka Liudmyla 1 Department of Psychology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine 2 Department of Political Psychology and International Relations, Faculty of Psychology, National Pedagogical Dragomanov University, Kyiv, Ukraine 3 Laboratory of Organizational and Social Psychology, G. S. Kostiuk Institute of Psychology of the NAES of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine 13 Vol.:(0123456789) Journal of Religion and Health Introduction On February 24, 2022, a Russian attack and full-scale hostilities began in Ukraine. This led to a humanitarian catastrophe in a number of cities and towns of Ukraine, as well as to a huge migration of the population both within the country and outside. The number of refugees to Europe from Ukraine amounted to 3,626,546 people at the moment on 22.03.2022. Data is updated daily by 12:00 CET. Data on border crossings by Ukrainians comes from various sources, most often from official border crossing points. Despite attempts to cross-check the statistics, border crossing data may not be accurate. This is due to some factors. Firstly, sometimes indicators are not updated in real time, but after some time, as new information about the past days has been received. Secondly, due to free movement within the Schengen visa area, cases of crossing borders with other countries, not only with Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, which have borders with Ukraine, are less often recorded. And according to some reports, a fairly large percentage of Ukrainians did not stay in bordering countries, but moved on to next ones. Thirdly, those Ukrainians who cross the border and return home are not considered in statistics. At the same time, a large number of people remained in the war zone and in cities that are subjected to regular shelling and bombing. Pediatricians Lava et al. (2022) believe that the most affected by the war, both physically and mentally, will be children and teenagers. In evacuation, in basements and houses next to people there are their pets: cats, dogs, rats, guinea pigs… In our study, we focused on the influence of these animals and relationships with them on maintaining the emotional state and the decision-making process of the Ukrainian residents during the war. Literature Review There has been very little research on the role of pets, specifically in terms of maintaining the emotional state of people during the war. Sacks (2021) describes the presence of companion animals in Union army camps during the American Civil War. It alleges that soldiers turned to animals of all kinds (including cats, dogs, mice and pigs, as well as less common species], despite official sanctions against such practices, to allay boredom and distract from the looming horror. Most importantly, pets have helped soldiers reconnect with their humanity in the midst of a necessarily inhumane act of warfare. The study is based primarily on letters and diaries from federal soldiers, as well as sketches and photographs, to demonstrate not only the ubiquity of animals in military camps, but also their importance to people in war. According to Gardiner (2018), during World War II tragedy occurred. An absurdity began to happen in Britain. The British government formed the National Air Raid Precautions Animals Committee (NARPAC) that convinced the government and fellow citizens that it would be rational to get rid of all pets 13 Journal of Religion and Health when the war broke out. The Committee explained this by saying that “to have a pet while the nation goes to war is an unaffordable luxury”. The result was the death of more than 750 thousand dogs and cats. The event went down in history as the “British pet massacre”. Britain declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. However, the inevitability of the conflict was clear at the beginning of the year. Under these conditions, the government, realizing that it is worth preparing for air raids, instructed NARPAC to draw up a defense plan. One of the strangest tips was just the recommendation to destroy pets. The committee believed that the owners of the animals would share their rations with them, and even the service considered it irrational to waste time on pets. Is it worth giving warmth and care to cats and dogs when this time can be spent collecting torpedoes and machine guns for the country? Officials decided that no—it is an unaffordable luxury! The Committee launched an extensive propaganda campaign. The owners were offered to “humanely” kill their pet with a slaughter gun. Polite members of the committee provided a rental service for such devices. Having a cat or a dog at home, while Hitler was standing at the gates of the Motherland, was simply a shame. During the coronavirus epidemic, a study was also conducted on the role of pets in the lives of their owners. Thus Puzier & O’Brien (2021) argue that pets should not be in the platform for virtual conferences «Zoom», while Wood et al. (2005) describe the positive impact of pets not only on their owners, but also on other people in the community, e.g. neighbors, even if they do not have animals. A study on the role of pets in the life of Ukrainian families in 2018 was conducted by us, Vlasova et al. (2018). The functions of the family are historical and connected with the socio-economic conditions in society, therefore, the nature of the functions also changes over time. It is logical to assume t (...truncated)