The Armed Forces of Ukraine receive, as assistance from all kinds of aid funds and sympathetic individuals, not only fat in tubes, body armor, embroidered shirts and transforming beds.
Just the other day I drew attention to the intriguing title of the article “How a Ukrainian programmer created software for battle control”.
I read the article, and after a little searching, I found additional information on this topic.
First, I will post what I managed to find and turned out to be the background, and then the text of the very article that intrigued me so much.
I found that social fundraising movements for the army gained immense popularity in Ukraine.
How many of these movements - I do not know, but I will tell you about one of them.
In the spring of 2014, activists from Nikolaev launched a fundraising site modeled on Planeta. RU.
The Russian project helps people to find funds for the implementation of cultural and social projects according to the principle “Who can do what they can”.
Its Ukrainian counterpart, called "The People's Project", was distinguished by its theme.
The money is being collected for modern military ammunition and military equipment for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
First People's Airborne Battalion.
It all started with a trip of a group of activists to Chongar, with the aim of handing over the collected food and warm clothes to the paratroopers.
When they were with the paratroopers, the activists saw an unsightly picture of a general shortage, drew conclusions and posted the following statement on social networks:
1. Not a single general was here within a radius of 500 km. They share portfolios there and no one even cares to find out how the guys on the front line are doing.
2. With politicians, the situation is a little better, but not much. As a result, the guys feel that the people need them, but the government somehow does not.
3. No special equipment for the creation of fortifications, on the Russian side the fortifications were created very quickly, smoothly and using specialized equipment.
4. The outfit of the guys is worse than that of the local airsoft team. No unloading, no vests, no knee pads with elbow pads, no glasses from the strongest steppe wind, no collimators on automatic machines.
In this regard, the activists drew up a plan to provide public assistance to the paratroopers and posted it on social networks. Here it is:
I propose a plan for the creation of the "People's Airborne Battalion."
1. Create an initiative group and take patronage over one battalion of paratroopers in terms of their equipment.
2. Make a list of necessary things and their quantity.
3. Contact the UKRAINIAN manufacturers of these things, explain the patriotic task and get adequate prices for all this, no kickbacks, no extra charges for budget risks, etc. As a result, the required amount of funds will emerge.
4. Open an online fundraising campaign at biggggIdea.com so people can see the progress of fundraising.
5. Collect money, buy equipment and DRESS THE GUYS SO that even NATO fighters would envy and even more so from the other side of the cordon saw that our guys would let them come off, if necessary.
If you like the idea, please spread it, you don't like it, just walk by and you don't need to start whining that this is not our business, that this government is stealing money and can buy everything and other crap themselves.
In total, according to the calculations of activists, to meet the needs of the paratroopers, it was required to collect 1 million 185 thousand hryvnia.
And the amount was collected - so the inscription on the image below says.
Everything was as planned, except that they refused to collect funds using a specialized site.
It was decided to collect money on a separate site specially created for this.
Looking ahead, I will say that the project has grown and migrated: for this, the Regional Piety Fund was registered.
Under his auspices, another website was launched: the People's Project of the All-Ukrainian Volunteer Center.
One of the slogans under which there is a collection of money to equip the Ukrainian army is a quote from Napoleon Bonaparte:
"A people who do not want to feed their army will feed someone else's."
With the help of the "People's Project" money was collected for the implementation of several dozen projects, including:
- “People's armored KAMAZ”.
126 thousand hryvnia for bulletproof booking of 1 KamAZ-43114 vehicle was donated by one single person;
- "People's ATV".
163 thousand hryvnia for the purchase of three Yamaha Grizzly ATVs for the "Donbass" battalion was also donated by one single person;
- "People's drone".
Collected 994, 4 thousand hryvnia and bought 8 quadrocopters and airplanes of different models.
Thrown into the drones 1007 people;
- "People's cart".
Collected 2 million 623 thousand hryvnia. We bought and armored 27 jeeps, adapted for the installation of large-caliber machine guns.
Thrown 235 people;
- "Assistance to the center for the rehabilitation of the wounded."
Donated 850, 9 thousand hryvnia and bought a German ultrasound device for the treatment of infected and purulent wounds Söring Sonoca 185.
Dropped 813 people;
- Razpiznavalna deck of cards "Biy padlyuk".
Collected 15 thousand hryvnia and ordered a circulation of 15 thousand playing cards with portraits of enemies of independence and European integration.
Even the journalists of “Komsomolskaya Pravda” got into the “Death Deck”.
Thrown 49 people;
Another project
It was suggested by Evgeny Maksimenko.
Judging by the data from social networks, he is a native of the urban-type settlement Kapustin Yar in the Astrakhan region.
Apparently, together with his parents he moved to live in Kiev, where he graduated from secondary school No. 73, and then the Kiev Polytechnic Institute.
Specialization: developer of business applications and computer games, network administrator.
Basic skills: FreeBSD operating system, ABAP programming language, PHP application development language.
After graduating from the Polytechnic, he worked as an administrator of a computer class in a secondary school.
From March 2006 to April 2012 he worked in his specialty (where for several months, where for several years) in four companies.
In May 2012, he got a job at the Kiev branch of the American company EPAM Systems.
For some reason, his Facebook profile indicates that he still works for an American company.
Apparently forgot to fix it.
Before the conflict, he was so fond of playing airsoft that he created a program to coordinate the team's actions and exchange messages between its members.
What have you done for the army?
Under this slogan, a young programmer from Kiev decided to contribute to helping the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
To begin with, he refined his program and adapted it for reconnaissance and coordination on the battlefield and called it "Combat".
Forged plowshares into swords, so to speak.
The Kombat system uses a peer-to-peer P2P (peer-to-peer) network architecture.
Data exchange occurs via Mesh networks or radio station networks using the UDP protocol from the TCP / IP family.
In the absence of communication with the server, the user of all the capabilities of the system remains the functions of offline navigator and the accumulation of intelligence. When a connection appears, synchronization with the server takes place.
In the near future, it is planned to exchange data with neighboring tablets without the participation of a server.
For ATO soldiers both software and connection to the system and service are free.
History of events on the computer screen.
But donating the program and teaching the soldiers to use it was not enough.
The system is useless without tablets, smartphones, laptops and other accessories.
And in the treasury there is no money for a program unknown to anyone and untested in real combat conditions.
Since a lot of money was required, he proposed a new national project on the volunteers' website: collecting money for equipment for his system.
The project was reviewed, approved, and a list of divisions and necessary equipment was drawn up.
A list of some devices for which donations are collected:
Apollo C8 shockproof waterproof tablet phone - 27 pcs;
Sigma mobile X-treme PQ79 shockproof waterproof tablet - 12 pcs;
Apollo C5 shockproof waterproof phone - 11 pcs;
Satellite modem Iridium GO - 6 pcs;
Dell Latitude E5520 Laptop x 4
Departments for which the equipment is intended:
Office "A" TsSO SBU;
138th TsSpN (Vasilkov);
24th separate mechanized brigade;
8th Special Purpose Regiment (Khmelnitsky);
73rd Naval Special Operations Center of the Ukrainian Navy;
3rd separate special-purpose regiment of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine (Kirovograd).
