My name is Olesya Koryagina, and I’m the coordinator of project “Camouflage net for the Army by volunteers”. For during over 8 years volunteers of our project have been weaving by their own hands camouflage net for the Ukrainian Army. With the beginning of fighting operations in 2014 in the East of Ukraine it became clear that Ukraine is not ready for the war. Twenty three years ago our country u
nilaterally gave its nuclear weapon under the guarantee of its safety and territory. But Russian Federation has violated its obligations and resolved military conflict in the East of our country. We were on the way of peace and disarmament and Russian aggression was insidious and unexpected. But undeclared war has still begun and our guys had to take up arms and defend the country from aggressor often not having not only essentials but even basic things. While our government was solving global problems, ordinary people have become volunteers and took a huge amount of issues on the Army provision on themselves as everyone understood that the enemy has already come and the soldiers are to be dressed, fed, saved and masked right now and there is no time for training as the enemy is already here, strong and ready to kill. Thus, Ukrainians of all over the world have joined forces to help soldiers and wounded – collected money, bought uniform, shoes, body armors, helmets, medications, high-tech devices, equip hospitals, carried huge loads by themselves, delivered wounded and killed, transferred cars for the Army. Ukrainians are hardworking and quick-witted nation that’s why we can always find the way out. When there was not enough money for the uniform for warriors people began to sew it themselves. When there was not enough food for soldiers, housewives began to cook at home and to send food and preserves to the front. If there were no local maps, cartographers-volunteers at their own expense made it and passed to soldiers. Not enough cars – people gave their own ones or bought new ones for the expense of collected from people money. No opportunity to keep warm in winter – people made stoves out of available means and such examples are hundreds. First defeats and human losses have shown that to save people and machinery is not possible without quality masking of positions. Kilometers and kilometers of camouflage nets were needed. There was nothing to mask the Army and we began to weave nets by our own hands. The first camouflage net was weaved just by our hands in August 2014 in Kyiv. We’ve used for it already unnecessary cotton things and fishing. This simple idea quickly spread around the country. Many thanks to mass media and social networks as thanks to them a lot of indifferent citizens has joined us and the net was weaved in many cities and villages, schools and high schools, private enterprises, libraries and even in diasporas of Western Europe. Now all over Ukraine there are more then 150 groups in more then 120 cities and villages. Every day thousands of people weave masking and it is thousands of meters of net sent to the front. Our nets are not perfect; they are short-lived but we make them very quickly and they are very cheap. The manufacturing scheme is very simple – we use remnants of fabric, unused in everyday live things, weave it into the basis which we buy directly from Ukrainian manufacturer…. And hours of painstaking work of volunteers. It is difficult to count how many tons of smatter and trash we have redone into useful thing. The result is saved lives of our guys who are now in the front defending our country. This is simple truth – if not to stop aggressor, tomorrow he’ll go further. Ukraine today who tomorrow? One can continue to be in illusion of calmness and think that it is internal affair of Ukrainians but we have ensured on our own experience that right now the true military invasion into the Eastern Europe is happening. There is silence in your home and you don’t hear shell exploding only because our warriors restrain aggressor. They defend YOU and us and we defend them.
