This year, for her birthday, Valeria Avramenko does not ask for a gift. Instead, the 30-year-old Ukrainian opened an online fundraiser to collect donations for the army and medical personnel. On social networks, she matched her request with a photo of her, taken in 2015 in the family vacation home, in Boutcha, where she was celebrating her birthday. The young woman appears in a dress and sunglasses, a cake in her hands, ready to blow out her candles.
At the time, this town on the outskirts of Kiev was not yet the symbol of war crimes committed by Russia, but a peaceful place, bordered by the forest where Valeria spent all her summers. “My dearest wish today is for Ukraine to win. So it makes sense to give money to the army”, she explains to World from the Netherlands, where she lives in exile.
His approach is far from isolated. Since the Russian invasion, kitties for the military have become ubiquitous in Ukraine. Social networks are full of calls from individuals to make donations. This type of collections appeared in the active phase of the Donbass war, from 2014 to 2015, but remained localized. The phenomenon became massive after the Russian invasion in 2022. “Now it’s the norm, explains Anton Hrushetskyi, director of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS). Everyone knows someone on the front line, so everyone contributes. It is a way of participating in the war effort and in the resistance. » For those who are not at the front or who have fled Ukraine, it is also a way of showing solidarity, and even, sometimes, of “fighting a sense of guilt”, believes Anton Hrushetskyi.
No study has been published on the subject. But according to a KIIS survey published in January on the impact of the war, 88% of Ukrainians have already given money to the army since the start of the invasion. The contributors, whether in the country or refugees abroad, have varied profiles and ages, ranging from young techies in kyiv to grandmothers living in the countryside. Even the children participate. “We regularly see them selling their drawings or collecting donations at the petrol station for the army”underlines the sociologist.
“Enormous financial efforts”
Donations vary between a few hryvnias, the local currency (1 euro = 41 hryvnia), to several thousand euros. Ukrainians repeat it with each fundraiser: “There is no small donation. » Valeria Avramenko opted for automatic payments: 800 euros each month, or 20% of her engineering salary.
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