Crowdfunding weapons as Ukraine soldiers fight, die

In his latest report from the frontlines, Ukrainian-American journalist-activist David Kirichenko shares his efforts to deliver crucial supplies, including high-tech surveillance drones, to Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk Oblast and Zaporizhzhia Oblast. He bears witness to the emotional toll inflicted on these troops after more than two years of war and reflects on how freedom for Ukraine remains the ultimate goal for those still fighting. This is the second of two parts. Read part one.

I had last visited my friends in the 109^th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade in the late summer of 2023, when their unit was stationed close to Bakhmut. A few weeks after I’d left, their base was struck by the Russians and they had to evacuate from Bakhmut. Norman, a unit commander, told me about that development in March of this year when I revisited the brigade, whose most recent fighting had been close to the Avdiivka front.

As they had done during my prior visit, the soldiers took me out to the field and deployed a new drone they had received from the Ukrainian government. This one was a Backfire K1. At one point in the distance, there was an explosion – it was the Russians bombing Ukrainian positions nearby – and the shockwave roared past us. I couldn’t imagine being on the zero-line, where soldiers receive the brute force of those bombs falling on them. 

The soldiers from the 109^th also showed me a little radio-controlled car they were testing. They were in the process of making sure all its functions worked, as they were preparing to stuff it with explosives and send it into a Russian trench to detonate.

Resigned to his fate but still there, still fighting

I conducted drone warfare interviews with several soldiers from the unit, including Norman. He has a very gentle and soft nature. If you’d known him in his prior life you never would have assumed Norman would become a soldier. When I last saw him in late 2023, as in all previous interactions, he was happy and cheerful. But this time around, he was different. Norman was colder, and in our interview he was soft-spoken and seemed a bit distracted.

After my return from Ukraine, it hit me. I now realize that his spirit was crushed. What I had interpreted as coldness from Norman was his response to the repeated trauma of watching his men fall and the toll that had taken over time. He seemed resigned to his fate, aware that his end might be near, yet compelled to endure the agony of losing his comrades first. Norman knows his time is coming, yet he is still there, still fighting.

Our physiological instinct is to live; our soul’s instinct is to love. When we have to fight to defend ourselves and our loved ones, we will, but we can only take so much. The loss and sorrow that Norman and many other soldiers feel is overwhelming.

Following my time in Donetsk Oblast, I also spent time with units from the 108^th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade and the 128^th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. One day, with soldiers from the 108^th Brigade, I went near the “gray” zone on the front. This area is contested and experiences shelling daily.

Taking advantage of a cloudy day with extensive rain – which provided cover from drones and allowed safer movement – the soldiers wanted to show me what the Russians had done to villages in the area. We drove through entire villages that had been destroyed by Russian artillery and rocket fire. There were no signs of human life anywhere; nearly every house we passed showed visible signs of having been shelled, and craters were all around.

What I witnessed showed me what awaits the rest of Ukraine if Russia continues its advance: only death and destruction. The same destruction that I witnessed with my own eyes in Bakhmut in 2022, when the Russians were relentlessly shelling the city, killing and destroying everything in their path. Russia wants to kill and enslave the Ukrainian people, as has been the goal of its leadership for hundreds of years.

When I went to visit a drone unit from the 128^th Brigade, I had the chance to speak with over a dozen Ukrainian soldiers. Men from what seemed like every single Ukrainian oblast were represented in the room. One man in his mid-50s from Khmelnytskyi Oblast, eager to learn, had joined the drone unit to fight. We were a sight to behold, all these men talking about life and politics – in an unlikely setting, but with a common goal of preserving their country and our freedom.

Crowdsourcing a war supply chain

While in Ukraine, I wanted to find new ways to help Ukrainian soldiers. One method I thought of was to auction off Ukrainian flags signed by members of different units on the frontline. I bought six flags and a few markers, and with each frontline unit that I visited, I had soldiers sign the flags. Once I returned to the United States, I sold each flag for $500, collecting $3000. With a local contact that sources drones from Poland, I sent the funds to my friend Alina, who bought attack drones and delivered them to units that storm Russian trenches.

Despite the success of the initiative, I wanted a more stable method of sourcing supplies for soldiers.

A short while later, my late friend Dmytro Lysenko, a drone pilot with the 109^th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade, sent me from the frontline videos in which he showed how they were setting up and would be using the Mavic drone that I had gifted them.

He followed up with a picture showing my name written on a bomb that they were attaching to a drone as a way to thank me for my help. Then an idea came to mind. I told Dmytro that we could create a campaign selling signatures on bombs to raise funds to buy supplies for the 109^th.

The campaign kicked off with my posting on X (formerly known as Twitter) and reaching out to friends to see if they were interested in donating in exchange for having soldiers autograph bombs. The idea quickly attracted attention, and soon I was busy collecting funds.

I forwarded the names and messages to Dmytro, who handled the personalization of the bombs. He would then photograph the signed bombs and send the images back to me. Occasionally, he also shared videos of the bombs being mounted on drones, just before they were deployed on missions.

I told Dmytro to make a wish list of all the items they urgently needed. He texted me a list of the items, and I told him we would buy everything. In a matter of weeks, we were able to buy them everything they asked for.

I felt like I was making a difference and having an impact. Dmytro and I talked every day, and he always expressed immense gratitude for my help. Like the others in the unit, Dmytro was a simple family man who loved his wife and young daughter. He had never had a desire to fight, but when the Russians invaded he took up arms to defend his native Donetsk Oblast.

One day I received from Norman, the unit leader, the dreaded message I always feared: “Dmytro has passed.”

How can this be? I thought. I had just spoken with Dmytro earlier that day. The news left a deep void in my heart.

“By the time help arrived to evacuate him, he had already died,” said Norman. The Russian strike had claimed several lives at their position, and another friend was now critically injured in the hospital, battling for his life. Norman had been close by and had witnessed the demise of his friends firsthand.

I’ve worked with many soldiers and units over the years in Ukraine. Even in Bakhmut, I would be in contact with them – and then, one day, they would stop replying. With Dmytro, I knew his fate through Norman. Dmytro had been excited to be featured in an interview for a drone report I was publishing, but he died before I could publish it.

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also commented on Dmytro’s death:

Dmytro was a person whom many people associated with the future of Donetsk Oblast, its rebuilding and development. A person who was the symbol of a new generation of young residents of Donetsk Oblast: patriotic, courageous, intelligent, open to the world…, a fervent patriot and resolute warrior who proved his faith in the sacred ideas of building Ukrainian statehood with blood, sweat and, ultimately, his life. He categorically did not tolerate injustice and fought for the truth with all his might, both in civilian life and on the front lines.

Reflection

The toll for so much of Ukraine is too high to bear. Some of the greatest Ukrainians will have died before they can see a free and liberated Ukraine. It is up to us now to honor their memory and continue the fight.

As one soldier told me, “We must continue the fight, for we will have our revenge on the Russians.” He also lamented that the bravest of the Ukrainians have died and that many have survived because they are cowards who ran away from the fight. That is a very painful thought for the soldiers. But they will continue on no matter what because they must avenge their fallen.

In 1622 Kasiian Sakovych, a professor at the Kyiv Brotherhood School, wrote about the Cossacks. “He wrote of Cossacks fighting for “Golden Liberty” to have the same rights and liberties that the rest of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth nobility enjoyed.

Yet it cannot be given to everyone, only to those who defend the fatherland and the lord. Knights win it by their valor in wars. Not with money but with blood do they purchase it’” (Plokhy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, pp. 82-83).

All the current soldiers who are fighting, and those who have perished or will perish, have purchased the freedom and rights of the Ukrainian people with their blood.

The 19^th-century Ukrainian poet and freedom fighter Taras Shevchenko believed freedom was the most important value and should unite all people, regardless of ethnicity or religion. Like our Cossack ancestors before us, freedom has been our calling throughout the centuries. Now is our chance to secure it once and for all. There is no true victory for Ukraine after such loss and destruction, but a battlefield victory is the minimum that Ukraine should achieve for its great sacrifices to protect humanity.

For my fallen friends, we shall tell their wives and children that they were heroes and the best sort of heroes because they didn’t have superpowers. They were just regular people who, when faced with terror, chaos, and evil, stood up to do their part and gave everything to protect their families and their country.

To their commanders, I say they were my brothers. Those four-hundred-year-old words still ring true: “For he that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.” To their commanders and to Norman: They led these men fiercely and with honor. And their deaths will not be in vain.

David Kirichenko is a Ukrainian-American freelance journalist and activist who, multiple times during the Russo-Ukraine War, has traveled to and worked in the areas being fought over. He can be found on the social media platform X @DVKirichenko