Editor's Note: This Kyiv Post+ article is part of the newspaper's special coverage of Russia's war against Ukraine and the aftermath of the EuroMaidan Revolution. A longer version of this article was published in Theinsider.ua on Aug. 11 and is reprinted with permission.Oksana Chernaya is shopping in Kyiv's military store “Kapterka.” She is doing her regular duty buying supplies for the Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting in the east.
Being an employee of the Institute for Economics and Forecasting of the National Academy of Sciences, Chernaya knows a lot about military equipment and its use in combat. She is informed to the point that even sellers in special shops look at her with surprise and awe.
As a volunteer, Chernaya has visited
the first platoon of the 20th Battalion of the
Dnipropetrovsk territorial
defense, which now takes part in military
actions near Donetsk, 5 times. She collects money, military
equipment, food for soldiers.
Her relationship
with the soldiers in the war zone started like this:
“My friend, a
Capoeira (Brazilian martial art) practitioner, volunteered for the
army in April. I remember his patriotic messages in social networks,
pictures from shooting-grounds and oath-taking. I was very proud as
he was the only person I knew who decided to defend the state.
I remember his post
in Facebook on April, where he asks to send them anything, from
sleeping mats to bullet-proof jackets. There were tons of “likes”
and “reposts”. At that time I was in Poland and thought all of
his friends had already sent him everything needed. But when I came
back, I found out no one had. I decided to buy and bring him
something myself.
If you compare the
war in May and now in August, I see that it was more like a holiday
back in May. There was no shelling. Soldiers were located in
Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and guarded a group of buildings.
After my first visit
it was clear that the conditions are very poor: the soldiers were
given only weapons and an extra uniform, which was damaged within a
month.
They had no
bulletproof vest, no helmets, no load
bearing vests or handheld radio. I thought that I should help, but my
personal money wasn’t enough for that. My first trip cost me two
monthly salaries, and I hardly brought anything: a vest, a radio,
some food and a little bit of medicine. It couldn’t help 30 people.
And then I realized
how responsible people could be. Usually when you see requests for
money, you think: “How can my Hr 50, 100 or 1,000 help on
the war scale.”
But I think now people understand, that even tough they can’t save
the world, but they can help someone, who is the world to his
children, parents, friends.
I go the east
approximately once every 10 days, or three times a month. It becomes
more dangerous each time.
I took 25 helmets over there, and just have bought 30 more,
but for a battalion of 300 people it’s nothing. There is a very big
problem with purchase of equipment. You
have to find both money for it and the equipment itself. Volunteers
like me buy things off at warehouses,
taking the most common things for our soldiers. That’s why you end up
spending weeks trying to find combat boots of size 42 and 43.
During my last trip
I brought a very expensive thermovision camera and a night vision
device.This will improve the soldiers’
ability to defend themselves and cut the
number of victims.
Soldiers are very modest and proud.
They will never ask for anything, and they always say they have
enough. You need to have a special approach to find out.
During my third
visit, when they got used to me and we shared borsch (Ukrainian
traditional soup), I started questioning them what they have.
-How many pairs of
combat boot?
– Six pairs.
And that’s for 26 people.
When you talk about
supplies for the army by the state and
millions donated by the people, you should
know that one trip of mine costs approximately Hr 100,000. For two
platoons (60 people) this is nothing.
When you start
looking at the work of deputy commander of supplies, you can see many
challenges. For instance, people often give away their clothes to
soldiers. But this is very impractical. All the clothing should be
purely military,
from socks to complicated equipment.
For combat boots
there are special thick socks that do not rub
feet. Glasses should be tactical to resist
debris. Knee pads and gloves for
motorcycles are not
suitable. They should be tactical and
easily detachable.
The trips themselves are very stressful. I feel it
when I come back, to this parallel reality
with people who care about completely
irrelevant things.There
are around 200 km between Dnipropetrovsk and the combat zone. It’s
three hours by car or five hours by tank. When I come back to the
“outside” world, I try to explain to people that their fugitive
peace depends on willpower and heroism of a bunch of soldiers, who
are still alive and fight against all odds. And that they need help
from all of us.
I am extremely
scared. Sometimes, when I pass all the Ukrainian checkpoints, I drive
alone on the road. I call my mom, so in case of shelling, she’ll be
the last to hear my voice. And I pray. When I drive in my homeland
without doing anything illegal,why
should I call my mom to say goodbye?”
Translated by Kyiv Post staff writer Iryna Yeroshko, [email protected]
