You will never give money to someone you don't trust, Serhiy Prytula is convinced. He told online.ua about a responsible attitude to money, the trust of the military, and how the Ukrainian army changed under the influence of volunteerism.
You will never give money to someone you do not trust, Serhiy Prytula is convinced. He told online.ua about a responsible attitude toward money, the trust of the military, and how the Ukrainian army changed under the influence of volunteerism.
One of our heroes of the interview, the founder of Ukrainer Bohdan Logvynenko, said that perhaps the habit of referring to curtains [in schools] in parental Viber chats somehow organized people's consciousness in such a way that now it is easier for them to donate to Bayraktars [Turkish UAV].
No. I'm afraid I have to disagree.
I am deeply convinced that the history of Ukrainian volunteering has its roots in the wonderful Ukrainian tradition of toloka [An old Ukrainian custom, which provides for a one-time free work of a group for the quick execution of large-scale work - Ed].
Corruption schemes with curtains, imposed on us during Soviet times and evolved in the 1990s and 2000s, are a slightly different parish, which has nothing to do with it.
Read the first part of the interview: Tens of thousands of people paid with their lives for the right of Ukraine to become a new country — Serhiy Prytula.
About the difference between charity and volunteering
What is the difference between charity and all other collective chipping in?
We understand that the foundation of all these curtains is not based on any goodwill of people who know that the state should organize everything on the school territory. But, on the other hand, just as we are volunteering now.
You can sit back and say that the state should have done everything: we pay taxes, that's all, they say, we are smoking bamboo. However, on the other hand, I do not see that Ukrainian society harasses people who cannot contribute to the army.
But if the mother did not throw herself on the curtains at school, we have many examples over the past 15 years when children were bullied. Someone felt the power to oppress one person with the whole class, schoolchildren to a child, parents to parents. It was like, “Hello there!”. This is an entirely dishonest story.
That is why we are talking about things that are not comparable.
About a responsible attitude to money
The accountability of people who collect money from other people is a must-see story. For eight years before the moment of the full-scale invasion, I personally, as a private person engaged in volunteering, had everything clear.
Several times a month, I show what we purchase, and at the end of the month, I give a clear financial report; I show where and why all has gone. And so every month of God, year after year, year after year, year after year, year after year.
And when someone says now that people can't give so much money to Prytula for the fund, that some oligarchs are laundering their money through it, I am shocked because when the great war [full-scale invasion in 2022 - Ed.] began, people gave money to those volunteers and volunteer organizations that were their clear by their principles of work, to which there were no questions for the previous eight years.
Serhiy Prytula with volunteer children, September 2022
Therefore, in 8 years, I collected 52 million hryvnias, and now we are moving towards 4 billion. And this is a gigantic responsibility for people.
The accountability of people who collect money from other people is a must-see story. For eight years before the moment of the full-scale invasion, I personally, as a private person engaged in volunteering, had everything clear.
After all, the basis of our work is a responsible attitude to use this money. That's why we are scrambling, searching worldwide for lower prices for some product range.
That is why we even have certain suppliers who ask us not to show the price of what they sell to us and for how much because if we offer what they are dumping to us, they will be kicked out of the market.
Because everyone buys 100 of something from the company, and we take 65-70. They will simply be killed by their people and bewitched in the market.
About trust in military volunteers
Therefore, it still lies in the realm of trust. You would never give money to someone you don't trust.
It is impossible to earn trust in a second, and it is a long-term process, particularly in such a sensitive area as the compilation of volunteerism and the army.
Firstly, you have to earn the trust of the military so that they will let you in. No, of course, the army will take everything. As the chief of staff of one of the brigades said: “This is a mechanized brigade! Here, as in an abyss. We will take as much as you bring.”
But we are discussing something more than transferring material values to specific people. Somewhat different worlds, also based on trust, begin here.
Serhiy Prytula with a soldier of the 63rd Separated Mechanized Brigade, 107th Mechanized Battalion, January 2023
That is why it is now so interesting to communicate with the brigade commanders who were company and battalion commanders in 2014.
I met the first Brigade Commander at the end of 2019. It was already almost six years of volunteering. And they were never a priority for me. Platoon commanders, company commanders, battalion commanders, and then we lived on, on and on, and we grew up.
When you arrive, you don't know the company commander, but you remember very well some of the adventures of this brigade commander in Donbas in 2014.
How the army changes under the influence of volunteerism
The army is also changing under the influence of volunteerism.
This is not always a good change because volunteers are relaxing. Let's be honest. The army is also a section of society.
Not all volunteers are angels. And not all soldiers are angels either. And sometimes, it happens that you are not so careful with something you have that is not given to you by the state. Somehow you can use it, break it, or throw it away because the volunteers will still bring it.
I remember how, in the summer, we came to Zaporizhzhia to one of the SOF units [Special Operations Forces - Ed.]. And the unit commander said in a private conversation that If I heard that one of his fighters had asked volunteers to bring underpants or socks, I, he said, would cut his head off.
I say: “So you need underwear and socks?” He says, “Yes. Well, let the woman send, let the mother send. Let him buy it, and his salary is 107 thousand hryvnias. Shops are open. From volunteers, if we want something that the state cannot give us, we ask for optics, we ask for drones, we ask for cars, we ask for medicine, hell, we are asking a lot! But don't bother the volunteer's head with socks and underwear.”
This is not my position. I know people who send socks and underpants, t-shirts, and sleeveless shirts to the military. And, ideally, they do it. But here I saw my view of all this from the side of the army.
However, I believe that without volunteers, the Ukrainian army would definitely not be so well equipped on a particular list of things.
Serhiy Prytula gave the drones to the Kyiv defenders on February 25, 2022
Well, I'm sorry, if in March-April [2022] 50% of the bulletproof vests were given by the state, and volunteers gave 50% of the bulletproof vests, and then remove the volunteers from here and ask how much more time the state would have spent. Time equals in our realities - the lives of Ukrainian soldiers, to so that they have complete security?
I come to the subdivisions and don't see these little drones there that the state would give them. Volunteers are 99-100%.
I ask: “Tell me, were you given “Mavic” or “AUTEL” [name of drones - Ed.] from the Ministry of Defense?” “No, it's all from volunteers”, they say. This does not mean that, at this moment, I look at the ministry and say: “Hey, what are you doing there?”. I know how much they make how they work.
Some very decent people do the same thing 24/7, trotting worldwide for everything they need.
It's just that the challenge is so huge that even all of us together, Ukraine with its volunteers, material and technical assistance from the West, and help from civilized countries - we and all together cannot collect to provide for the army fully.
So that Valery Fedorovych Zaluzhnyi [The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - Ed.] or Oleksiy Yuriyovych Reznikov [Mister of Defense - Ed.] came out and said: “Break it up, everything is there and still lying in the warehouse!” That's why we move like this.
You may also be interested in Serhiy Prytula: Donating, but giving bribes is like cursing Putin and humming Russian pop.
