‘We’re fighting the war of the future’: How a charity became one of Ukraine’s most powerful weapons

Twelve years of Kremlin aggression, including nearly five years of all-out war, have inflicted huge damage on Ukraine, but the intense pressure has also forged a military that is one of the strongest – and surely the most innovative – in Europe.

When Moscow annexed Crimea and created heavily armed militia to seize parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014, the nation was reeling from a revolution that had ended with more than 100 protesters being killed in Kyiv, and the country’s Kremlin-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych, fleeing with other top officials to Russia.

The Ukrainian military was in disarray, demoralised by decades of underfunding, infiltration by Moscow’s agents and the debacle of Crimea, which Kyiv surrendered – while a “concerned” West stood by and wrung its hands – without putting up a fight.

Russia hoped the fractured state would crumble, but Ukrainian society stitched it back together. Volunteers filled yawning gaps in the country’s defences, with some taking up arms to defend the Donbas region, while a vast support network raised money to equip this fledgling force with uniforms, vehicles, weapons, food and medical kit.

In spring 2014, one group of volunteers began using donations to buy bulletproof vests, and delivered them to soldiers after making a couple of additions in marker pen: a drawing of a trident – Ukraine’s national symbol – and the message “Come back alive”.

Since then, the organisation of that name, which grew out of that loose collective of volunteers, has raised about $1 billion (€900 million) for the Ukrainian military, and aims to match that figure in donations for this year alone.

“The initial concept was pretty simple and emotional – to help people who needed something,” says Taras Chmut, the director of Come Back Alive. “The state of the armed forces then was awful and its needs were huge ... Now the war has changed, the needs have changed and our work has changed.”

From scraping together money for body armour, Come Back Alive has gone on to supply the military with a vast array of equipment, including hundreds of thousands of drones, thousands of infantry weapons and vehicles, electronic warfare and air defence systems and mobile modules for servicing the country’s F-16 fighter jets.

“It’s more than the militaries of some Nato countries have in their entire arsenal,” says Chmut.

[ Inside the dugouts powering Ukraine’s drone warOpens in new window ]

While running a wide range of courses for troops and modernising training centres in co-operation with Denmark and the European Union, Come Back Alive also helps Ukraine’s military tackle urgent battlefield challenges, such as Russia’s deployment of jet-powered attack drones that are twice as fast as previous versions.

The charity is supplying new interceptor drones to Ukrainian units for combat testing, to find the models that perform best and can be produced in sufficient numbers with the necessary speed.

Chmut says Ukraine will have a reliable and large-scale answer to Russia’s jet drones “definitely in six months, hopefully in four”.

The foundation now has about 200 staff and most of its funding comes from grants provided by European governments, with smaller contributions coming from international organisations, Ukrainian firms and individuals in Ukraine and abroad.

Come Back Alive plays a role that may not even exist in any other country – it is a non-governmental organisation that implements multimillion-euro defence projects as a partner of foreign states and its own country’s military, and is trusted to work with maximum efficiency and zero tolerance for corruption.

“We have been doing this for many years, have a good reputation, work quickly and bring a great deal of transparency to all these processes,” says Chmut.

“You could say we’re client-orientated when it comes to those who donate money and those who receive it. This allows us to find the best solutions to needs and problems,” he adds. “And we have great expertise in what we do. About 40 per cent of our staff have taken part in the war, so they have a lot of experience in how the military works, and they are specialists in their fields.”

Chmut served as a marine before joining the newly formed analytical department of Come Back Alive in 2018.

The depth of military experience in the organisation and its close ties with soldiers at the front – working every year with more than 600 units from all branches of the armed forces – give it great insight into the state of Europe’s biggest war since 1945.

Ukraine’s troops retook more than 250sq km and 16 villages in Donbas this autumn in an operation dubbed Vivaldi. But at the same time, Russia stepped up ballistic missile and jet drone attacks across Ukraine, pounding its already weakened energy grid and inflicting more damage on the ailing economy.

“War takes place in different domains, and the battlefield is only one of them. And at this stage of the war, it is not the main domain,” Chmut says.

“The situation on the battlefield is considerably better for us than in other years. But the Russians, unlike previously, are focusing more on other areas – our energy sector, economy and the resilience of our society. All three are in quite bad shape.”

US president Donald Trump’s open admiration for Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin is again paying dividends for the Kremlin, even as its troops continue to fail to achieve their prime objective – full occupation of the Donetsk region, which with neighbouring Luhansk makes up the area known as Donbas.

In recent weeks, Trump has lifted sanctions on Russian diesel exports, accused Kyiv of prolonging the war and sent envoys to hold secretive talks with Moscow that reportedly revolved around potential postwar business deals.

At the same time, Trump ally Elon Musk – who often repeats and reposts Russian propaganda points about the war – restricted the Starlink satellite internet access that Ukrainian forces rely on for air defence and front-line operations. Normal service was restored after several days, but the disruption seemed to please Putin, who called Musk “a true genius” this week and said he was in “close contact” with the tycoon.

[ ‘The war is getting nearer’: Ukraine’s eastern exodus accelerates as Russia steps up attacksOpens in new window ]

The strange and unpleasant upshot for Ukraine is that US pressure to bow to Putin’s demands is growing, just as Russia’s position on the battlefield worsens.

“The Russians couldn’t achieve their strategic goals this year. Or last year or the year before that. So they will probably try to find other ways to wage war effectively.

And it looks like they are not doing too badly in that,” Chmut says.

Kyiv is performing a perilous balancing act – resisting US pressure to give Putin what he wants, while persuading Trump not to completely cut off intelligence sharing, arms purchases and Starlink provision that are crucial to Ukraine’s defence.

Europe plans to expand its own satellite internet and intelligence capabilities and build new air defence weapons, but they could take years to match current US systems.

Even as Russia expands covert attacks on infrastructure and industry around Europe, Chmut says parts of the continent are failing to react to Putin’s aggression.

“Some lessons have been learned, and some countries have learned them. Others have not ... The sense of war is surely different in Estonia and Portugal, or in Romania and France.

“Modern warfare is very fast-moving, and cycles of change and decision-making in Europe are pretty slow. That is creating a growing gap between the war of the future – which we are fighting now – and the decisions and approaches of European countries in general.”

[ Capital grateful for mild autumn amid intensifying Russian strikes and blackoutsOpens in new window ]