Ukrainians’ support (in Ukraine and abroad) for their country and armed forces during the war

How do Ukrainians (in Ukraine and abroad) help their country and its armed forces during the war? What impact does volunteering have on the situation?

Published

28.06.2024

There is no centralized calculation of all volunteer aid provided to the Ukrainian army since February 24, 2022. However, it is of great, if not decisive, importance. Firstly, volunteer assistance is comprehensive and large-scale. Secondly, it is very prompt in contrast to the bureaucratic state machine.

Money for the army is raised by well-known foundations – Come Back Alive, Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation, Razom for Ukraine – and many smaller but no less important initiatives, as well as just ordinary people organizing small fundraising campaigns for their loved ones who went to war. There is also a widespread practice when a family or a group of people “take care” of the military unit where their loved one serves and supports it financially on an ongoing basis.

According to the Center for Strategic Communications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, from February 2022 to May 2023, citizens, private companies and banks transferred almost UAH 100 billion for humanitarian aid and defense of Ukraine. That is, charitable foundations channel on average UAH 7.1 billion per month to equipment, weapons and military hardware for the army. We can take for comparison the 2024 state spending on the army: UAH 1.164 trillion in total and UAH 265 billion of it for weapons and equipment. That is, the government spends an average of UAH 23 billion per month on weapons and equipment. Thus, Ukrainian volunteer foundations purchase weapons and equipment for a third of the amount that the entire state spends on the same needs – this is an incredibly high rate that has no analogues in the world.

At the same time, it does not take into account the number of small private initiatives, which may turn out to be commensurate with the activities of the foundations, because there are a lot of them and some of them are noticeably large-scale. For example, a writer, Andriy Lyubka, raises money for personal accounts without the involvement of a charity fund and he has already purchased almost 280 cars for the army. A Lviv activist, Sviatoslav Litynsky, was able to raise more than UAH 21 million for the Armed Forces of Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion.

There is another important thing: public procurement is a very slow and bureaucratized process, and because of this, the state is simply not able to provide the army with everything it needs as quickly as volunteers do. That is why volunteer aid remains an extremely important lever that allows Ukraine to hold the front. In addition, volunteer initiatives often become the basis of innovations at the state level. For example, such well-known volunteers as Serhiy Sternenko, Maria Berlinska, and Serhiy Prytula have been talking about the extreme importance of drones at the front since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. In the end, the state listened to them and Ukraine has become the first in the world to officially create a separate type of military force – the Unmanned Systems Forces.

A war of such a scale as in Ukraine is a challenge not only for our state, but also for developed Western economies. It was impossible to prepare for this in full, and therefore Ukrainians must continue to support their state and army – this is vitally important.