Russian citizens delivering various supplies to its forces
Natalia Abiyeva is a real estate agent specializing in rental apartments in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, east of Moscow. But lately, she has been learning a lot about battlefield medicine.
Packets of hemostatic granules, she found out, can stop catastrophic bleeding; decompression needles can relieve pressure in a punctured chest. At a military hospital, a wounded commander told her that a comrade died in his arms because there were no airway tubes available to keep him breathing.
Abiyeva, 37, has decided to take matters into her own hands. Wednesday, she and two friends set out in a van for the Ukrainian border for the seventh time since the war began in February, bringing onions, potatoes, two-way radios, binoculars, first-aid gear and even a mobile dentistry set. Since the start of the war, she said, she has raised more than $60,000 to buy food, clothes and equipment for Russian soldiers serving in Ukraine.
“The whole world, it seems to me, is supporting our great enemies,” Abiyeva said. “We also want to offer our support, to say, `Guys, we're with you.'”
Across Russia, grassroots movements, led in large part by women, have sprung up to crowdsource aid for Russian soldiers. They are evidence of some public backing for President Vladimir Putin's war effort — but also of the growing recognition among Russians that their military, vaunted before the invasion as a world-class fighting force, turned out to be woefully underprepared for a major conflict.
The aid often includes sweets and inspirational messages, but it goes far beyond the care packages familiar to Americans from the Iraq War. The most sought-after items include imported drones and night vision scopes, a sign that Russia's $66 billion defense budget has not managed to produce essential gear for modern warfare.
“No one expected there to be such a war,” said Tatyana Plotnikova, a business owner in the city of Novokuybyshevsk on the Volga River. “I think no one was ready for this.”
Plotnikova, 47, has already made the 1,000-mile drive to the Ukrainian border twice, ferrying a total of 3 tons of aid, she said. Last week, she posted a new list of urgently needed items on her page on VKontakte, a Russian social network: bandages, anesthetics, antibiotics, crutches and wheelchairs.
Medical gear is in high demand in part because of the growing firepower of Ukraine's military as the West increasingly fortifies it with powerful weapons. Alexander Borodai, a separatist commander and a member of the Russian parliament, said that materials to treat shrapnel wounds and burns were needed “in great quantities” on the Russian side of the front. More than 90% of Russian injuries in some areas, he said, have recently been caused by artillery fire.
Borodai said that his units had noted the use of 155 mm shells fired by U.S. howitzers and that Russia's leadership may have underestimated the determination of the West to support Ukraine.
“It's not making the military operation go any faster from our point of view — it's making our situation more difficult, I don't deny it,” Borodai said, referring to Western weapons deliveries. “It's possible that our military leaders were not ready for there to be such massive support on the part of the West.”
Ukraine's military, tapping into Western support for its cause, is benefiting from a far more extensive crowdfunding campaign that is delivering millions of dollars worth of donations in items like drones, night vision scopes, rifles and consumer technology.
Most of the groups collecting donations for Russian soldiers appear to be operating independently of the Russian government. They mostly rely on volunteers' personal contacts in individual units and at military hospitals that pass along lists of what they most urgently need.
In Russia's state media, these groups are rarely mentioned, perhaps because they undermine the message that the Kremlin has the war firmly in hand. But sometimes the message filters through to the Russian audience.
“Our service members keep saying they have all they need,” a television segment in April about such volunteers explained, “but a mother's heart has a will of its own.”
Outside state media, however, supporters of the war are pointing to private donations as a key to victory. Pro-Russian military bloggers, some of them embedded with Russian troops, are urging their followers to donate money to buy night vision equipment and basic drones.
“Our guys are dying because they lack this equipment,” one blogger wrote, while “the entire West is supplying the Ukrainian side.”
The needed equipment, largely imported, can be bought at Russian sporting goods stores or ordered online.