Paulius Skruibis

Existential psychotherapist | Head of Suicide Research Centre @ Vilnius University. Views my own.

[European Symposium on Suicide & Suicidal Behavior @ESSSB21]

We are pleased to offer registration grants for #ESSSB21 to participants from Ukraine and participants with lived experience.
🗓 Application deadlines: 16 February and 10 April 2026
📧 Apply by sending a motivation letter to: [email protected]

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

I'm very enthusiastic about this! From the very beginning of organising ESSSB21 we decided that art will play an important part in our conference.

[European Symposium on Suicide & Suicidal Behavior @ESSSB21]

ESSSB21 will be more unique than ever - the event will feature a rich ARTISTIC programme alongside its scientific content. Participants will be invited to reflect, and experience through artistic initiatives inspired by nature, community and Lithuanian cultural heritage.
#ESSSB21

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

Alright, I guess it falls to me -- just an ordinary guy from Ukrainian Donbas -- to explain a few obvious things to a New York real-estate developer who seems to care a lot more about the “commercial opportunities” being dangled in front of him by Putin and his mob fixer Kirill Dmitriev than about Ukraine, this region, or the questions of war, life, and death for millions of people whose fate he so casually talks about.

You see, real life is a bit more complicated than a primitive two-color map where Ukrainian regions are divided into “Ukrainian-speaking” and “Russian-speaking.”

Believe it or not, speaking Russian in everyday life does not mean wanting to live under Russian rule and the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin.

It doesn’t mean you’re somehow “by default” obliged to belong to Russia or serve the imperial whims of Vladimir Putin.

Especially not after the 2014 invasion -- and especially not after the slaughter that the business partners in the Kremlin unleashed on what is now an almost completely destroyed Donbas.

That horror opened countless eyes and finally shattered many illusions about what the so-called “Russian world” really is -- a plague, bringing death and cemeteries among the ruins of once-prosperous cities like Mariupol and Bakhmut.

You might be surprised, but back in 2014 the main centers for forming “volunteer battalions” were not Lviv or Ternopil -- they were “Russian-speaking” cities like Dnipro and Kharkiv.

They created and filled numerous famed units made up of local residents who took up arms to repel Russia’s hybrid invasion of Donbas when the regular army and the state were in collapse and paralysis.

That’s because we, the “Russian-speaking” Ukrainians, already understood perfectly well what was happening -- and made our final, irreversible choice in favor of Ukraine.

You might be surprised again, but when business partners in the Kremlin, through collaborators, saboteurs, and unmarked Russian regular forces, occupied Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014–2015, the majority of the region’s educated, entrepreneurial, and democratic-minded population fled those ���people’s republics,” which quickly turned into depressed criminal cesspools.

They left their homes and apartments and moved -- believe it or not -- to areas under Ukrainian control: to Kyiv, and to its peaceful suburbs like Irpin and Bucha (where I live), where so many of our fellow Donetsk natives started new lives from scratch.

And here’s a little hint for the self-proclaimed “experts” and “journalists”: even in Donbas, pro-Russian Russian-speaking people never identified themselves as “ethnic Russians” -- only as Ukrainians who just happened to speak Russian.

No matter what years of Russian war propaganda tried to claim about the “Russians in Donbas.”

If you think you know better than me -- someone born in Volnovakha, who grew up and lived there most of his life -- you’re mistaken.

And believe it or not, even now, in the fourth year of Russia’s full-scale slaughter in the so-called “Russian-speaking regions,” masses of Russian-speaking Ukrainians have fled and settled in Kyiv, Lviv, or Chernivtsi -- something you can easily notice just by walking through those cities.

I won’t even start on how many “Russian-speaking” Ukrainians are fighting right now in the Ukrainian army on the front lines against the Russian plague that came to their land.

Why is that?

Because we have long been part of the Ukrainian nation -- part of its political and cultural space.

Our capital is ancient Kyiv, not Moscow.

We argue about and criticize Ukrainian politicians whose decisions shape our lives.

We took part in the revolutions, the elections, the wars for this country.

We cheer for the Ukrainian football team, for Ukrainian singers at Eurovision.

Most of us, one way or another, see Ukraine as our country and our future — and today, more than ever in modern history, we are farther from Russian cultural space and closer to our fellow Ukrainians from Lviv, Lutsk, Ternopil, and Vinnytsia than ever before.

That’s called shared national values.

The democratic, European, and Euro-Atlantic Ukraine that is fighting for its survival and freedom against an imperial invader -- the Ukraine we’ve been trying for a decade to reform and make a better place to live -- that’s us.

That’s who we are. That’s what we believe in, and what matches our values and vision of the future.

And many of us from the “Russian-speaking regions” have already switched to Ukrainian in daily life and in public, returning to the embrace of Ukrainian culture and tradition -- and rejecting “Russian” with disgust and anger, because we don’t want to have anything in common with the fascist Russia of today, which brings only bloodlust, war, hatred, chauvinism, aggression, and the deceitful hypocrisy of its brainwashing television propaganda.

And frankly -- until our last breath -- we will want nothing to do with your Russia.

After all it has done -- killing our friends and relatives, taking our homes, and turning our “Russian-speaking cities” into vast cemeteries amid ruins where life will never return.

[European Symposium on Suicide & Suicidal Behavior @ESSSB21]

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS is now announced and we invite contributions from all areas of suicide research and prevention. Submissions are especially encouraged from diverse disciplines.

More details: https://t.co/yhmw2Aipka

#ESSSB21 #suicideresearch #suicideprevention

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

We invite you to the 21st European Symposium on Suicide and Suicidal Behaviour (ESSSB21), taking place in Vilnius on August 26-29, 2026.
We’re proposing rethinking as our theme for ESSSB21 – a fresh look at how we understand and respond to suicide.
https://t.co/oa5JdKprK8

[European Symposium on Suicide & Suicidal Behavior @ESSSB21]

Join us for the 21st European Symposium on Suicide and Suicidal Behaviour, taking place August 26–29, 2026 in Vilnius, Lithuania! ESSSB will bring together researchers, clinicians, and advocates to share knowledge, exchange ideas, and advance suicide prevention. #ESSSB21

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

@ErminiaColucci @Together4MH @MINPAKUofficial @ItsushiKawase @chiiika128 @Movie_ment Congratulations!

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

@PloederlM For me as well! Will see him on Tuesday in Vilnius. He is doing a training here on ASSIP.

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

@ErminiaColucci Congratulations!

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

@arbusis Wow

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

@POvilas860 Tik tiek, kad savižudybių visada daugiau vasarą nei žiemą.

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

@ConnellShayne @LithuanianGovt @ConnellShayne and @MarcJBryant thank you for kind words! Delighted to be a part of LivingWorks community.

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

@DovileStone @Erkius1 Bus :) Tik ne iškart, ir gal ne visi pranešėjai sutiks.

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

@PloederlM Thank you for this!

[IJERPH @IJERPH_MDPI]

New research from @CeAusteja and @PSkruibis: The Role of Spirituality during #Suicide Bereavement: A Qualitative Study.

Access for Free:
https://t.co/p4krik2oS9

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

I’ve donated for this cause. It’s a survival issue not only for Ukrainians, but for us as well. If we don’t do it, we’ll be killed, raped, tortured and exiled as in 1940.

[Andrius Tapinas @AndriusTapinas]

In exactly 24 hours Lithuania raised 1 800 000 euro out of 5 million we need to buy Bayraktar for Ukraine.
Lets do it!

Bank transfer
Beneficiary: Laisves TV
Account No: LT167300010156927144
Bank: Swedbank
SWIFT: HABALT22

Paypal: [email protected]

#bayraktarasukrainai

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

You say Never again? Then you should watch this: https://t.co/O75rlJMsJd

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

@arbusis O aš jį kaip tik mečiau skaityti dėl per daug pritemptų prielaidų ir laisvų interpretacijų imho.

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

Please read this story

[Paulius Skruibis @PSkruibis]

@profsiobhanon Dear Siobhan, please don’t say “a crisis in Ukraine”. It’s not a crisis, it’s war! It’s Russia attacking a sovereign country.