Donors are war-weary, so Ukrainian soldiers get creative for funds

Under the vaulted brick arches of a contemporary art center in central Kiev, a soldier in military green read his own poetry, far from the front lines of the war he has been waging since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Like many soldiers, Pavlo Vyshebaba, 37, a platoon commander with the 68th Brigade, has long collected donations to buy supplies for his unit, in his case using his poetry as an appeal.

But donations, which once poured in via the Internet, have lately fallen behind as the war continues. Mr. Vyshebaba recently took two weeks off from war to lecture across the country in an effort to personally ramp up contributions.

“I saw that by early 2023, online fundraising was no longer effective, my audience may have been exhausted, and we had no wins for a long time,” he said. “But we still needed all this stuff.”

In the past two weeks, he has raised more than $100,000, which will go directly to supplying soldiers on the front lines that he will return to days after this last poetry reading at a Kiev book festival.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, many Ukrainian military units have relied heavily on donations and charitable funds to supply their troops with much-needed supplies such as first aid kits, body armor, vehicles and even drones.

People and groups from all over the world rallied to Ukraine’s cause, providing valuable aid that made its way to the frontline far more quickly than goods arriving through often circuitous government channels.

Six months later, that enthusiasm seems to be waning somewhat, according to interviews with charities and military personnel who are fundraising. Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline say donations are now less frequent and people seem to be leaving the war behind, even though the conflict is as fierce and bloody as ever and casualties continue.

Because of this, some soldiers try to raise money on their own, often through unconventional means: selling paintings or memorabilia from the front lines, such as pieces of downed Russian drones; offering to add personalized messages to artillery shells for a fee; and, in one case, a soldier who raised money with a viral video he made almost single-handedly while fighting off a Russian advance.

The wartime musings of Mr. Vyshebaba, who has written poetry since childhood, have proved popular. He has so far raised enough money for his brigade to buy drones, radios, Starlink communications equipment and anti-drone weapons, among other things, he said.

“When large batches of drones, Starlinks, pick-ups started to arrive – the guys from those units came to thank me or the commanders wrote to me,” he said of previous funding moves.

But now in the back of the pickup of a supply sergeant, who for security reasons did not give his name, were the usual military armaments: an anti-tank guided missile launcher, missile launchers and ammunition boxes.

But the guns stopped working and the chests were empty. This once deadly equipment, the sergeant explained, had a different purpose, not to the front line but to the Salvador Dalí Academy of Contemporary Arts in the center of Kyiv. There it would be decorated and auctioned to raise money for his embattled brigade. He said he hoped a celebrity like Bon Jovi would buy the rocket launcher for an exorbitant sum.

“Most people are just tired of this war already,” said Ruslan Zubariev, a soldier of the 92nd Mechanized Brigade who became a one-man fundraiser after using a helmet camera. to film himself stopping a Russian advance almost alone. “Citizens don’t realize that if they are tired and stop donating, it doesn’t mean the war is over.”

Zubariev, 21, found himself in a unique position in February after his video went viral showing him killing several Russian soldiers and stopping an armored vehicle with a rocket launcher near the Russian-occupied town of Svatove. His unit until then had largely relied on outside volunteers bringing in equipment. After uploading his video, he gained thousands of Telegram and Instagram followers practically overnight.

So mr. Zubariev made money off his bravery on the battlefield, a move he deemed necessary as the military seemed unable to provide much of the equipment they needed to fight, he said in an interview.

“We fix cars, we fix equipment, we fix weapons. We fix this, this, this, this, this – generators, fuel, everything. It’s all breaking down,” he said. “We don’t get that stuff. We buy it all with our own money.”

Fundraisers usually buy the goods directly from suppliers, sometimes using intermediaries abroad. They can often bypass the sluggish bureaucracy and send them to specific units or soldiers, making them more nimble than the military’s own distribution system.

Even the large, established charitable and relief organizations are struggling with a waning interest in the war effort. Oleh Karpenko, the deputy head of the Come Back Alive foundation, one of Ukraine’s largest donors to the military, said fundraising is becoming increasingly difficult.

Come Back Alive was the first charity in Ukraine to be licensed to purchase military goods, including deadly weapons, directly from manufacturers.

Last year, the charity raised nearly $177 million and supported 580 military units with hundreds of vehicles, thousands of thermal imaging equipment, drones, radio stations and weapons. according to the annual report of the organization.

Mr Karpenko said that while they don’t have figures for this year yet, they expect to stay below that figure, due to declining international interest and a more challenging landscape domestically.

“The economic situation in the country is also becoming more difficult than a year ago,” he said.

The charity communicates directly with troops to assess their needs and expedite supplies to them.

“The state is a big bureaucratic mechanism that moves very slowly, but some needs are super urgent. Our advantage is speed,” he said. “We can buy without hundreds of approvals from 15 different offices. We can receive an agreement today, sign it, and have a truckload of machine guns in three weeks. The state cannot do this.”

In the hallway of the foundation’s new office on the outskirts of Kiev, the remains of crashed Russian drones lie wrapped in plastic, ready to be shipped to partners eager to receive a token from the frontline, Mr Karpenko said.

Smaller donors are also feeling the crisis. Les Yakymchuk, 30, has been collecting first aid kits since the beginning of the war with his charity, UA First Aidbut he said it had become increasingly difficult to maintain interest.

“When you raise money for a year or more than a year and you talk about the same things in the same way, people start to get tired of this, tired of sending money,” he said. His group has tried to generate interest in various ways, such as sending tokens from the battlefield, such as flags signed by the members of a battalion.

He said many requests for supplies still came directly from soldiers hoping to bypass the often complicated logistics of official government channels.

“Everyone is still calling us,” he said. “But this is war, and in war nothing can be perfect.”

Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting from Kiev, and Natalia Yermak from Kharkiv.