Facing a shortage of soldiers and the ravages of war, Ukraine has turned to the animal tranquilizer-turned party drug ketamine, the rave-scene classic MDMA and the lesser known hippy hallucinogen ibogaine to ‘promote battle readiness’. Perhaps more importantly however, by keeping its population comfortably drugged, the soldiers and citizens of Ukraine would, assumably, be less apt to protest the continuation of the war. Instead, they are likely to be satiated by the chemical-induced “Valhalla,” as one drugged Ukrainian solider recently described it.
Fascinatingly, during the Joe Biden administration, the United States Department of Defense (formerly Department of War) funded a study which allowed for the injection of ketamine or fentanyl into non-consenting Americans following a traumatic accident, like a car crash. It enrolled unconscious Americans into forced medical experiments regardless of their willingness to participate. The goal was to further develop treatment modalities for battlefield medical operations, specifically the practice of drugging soldiers and finding out if they develop a drug addiction later. The direct link between the U.S. and Ukrainian militaries became deeply intertwined during the Biden-era, as was exposed by Alex Jones in 2022 and eventually The New York Times in 2025.
The proposal to use wartime Ukraine as a testbed for psychedelic drug abuse was made by Dmytro Gurin, a member of the parliament in Kiev. Gurin is a member of the Servant of the People political party, the same party that the country’s Dictator Vladimir Zelensky is part of. Gurin is also a member of the country’s health committee. Gurin wanted MDMA (the primary drug within ecstasy, a mainstay of the electronic dance music scene) to be administered as a first-line treatment for war-related issues, not as a last-ditch effort to treat soldiers woes.
“He’d like E.U. financial support for Ukraine to develop a nationwide clinical trial to test MDMA-assisted therapy as a first treatment for trauma, rather than as a last resort, as is normally recommended,” Politico said in 2023.
While a drugged military may be a happy military, it may also be a productive military. By reducing trauma from the war via drug abuse, Kiev’s armed forces can make the most out of what manpower they have remaining. Ukraine’s military has been facing staffing shortages since soon after the war began. Conscription teams scour the country abducting young men.
Hellbound and Down 