Anastasia, tell us about yourself.
I was born in 1991 in Yuzhnoukrainsk, Mykolaiv region. After finishing school, I received a technical education at the National University ‘Odesa Polytechnic’. I got a red diploma, but I never worked in my speciality. I moved to Kyiv and worked in the IT sector.
I travelled a lot, visited more than 30 countries and spent almost all my income on this hobby. I love nature more than the city: hiking, trekking, climbing mountains. When I travel, I feel like I’m living. Travelling inspires me, evokes special emotions and impresses me in a good way. I think I’ve seen a lot, but when I was in Iceland I saw a volcano erupt for the first time and I burst into tears from the feelings I experienced.
Four years ago, I moved to Cyprus to live and work. I missed Ukraine and wanted to return before the full invasion, but it didn’t work out.
Although you were not in Ukraine on 24 February 2022, what was that day like for you?
A few months before that date, at the request of my manager, I was looking for expert opinions and any analytical data on a possible large-scale Russian aggression. So, at the end of January, I ordered all sorts of tinned food and other packaged goods for my mother and sister in Yuzhnoukrainsk and made them pack their anxious suitcases.
The 24th of February began at 6 a.m. when my sister called me and said: “Sister, wake up, the war has begun”. It was one of the worst days of my life. For a week or two after that, my hair turned grey.
My mother immediately said that she was not going anywhere because she had a cat and a dog, and she was not going to leave them, and on the third day she went to work: ‘What is the point of suffering at home, I have to work’. My sister stayed with her. I was very nervous, I was on the phone with them almost all the time, we were discussing where to go, because they live near the South Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plant, which could be of interest to the occupiers. And nobody knew how much time they had, because in the spring the Russian troops had already reached Voznesensk, which is 50 km from Yuzhnoukrainsk. The first months were the hardest, we didn’t know what to do, we just followed the news and stayed in touch.
Your volunteer work began in Cyprus. How did that happen?
The Ukrainian company I was working for in Cyprus allocated a certain amount of money in May 2022 to financially support the families of employees whose members had joined the Ukrainian army. I was asked to coordinate this area. Of course, I agreed and started receiving requests for bulletproof vests, helmets, boots, thermal imagers, which were a big problem in 2022, and drones were out of the question. My boss approved the expenditure and I took care of everything else: where, at what price and how to get it to Ukraine.
Without being in Ukraine, I wanted to help. I couldn’t weave nets or fill trench candles, so I saved soldiers’ lives in this way. And saving other people’s lives is a great honour for me.
This went on for several months, but from July onwards I realised that the planned budget was not enough because the requests kept coming. So I decided to open my first collection on my birthday in July. I remember it well, we were raising money for a drone.
To be honest, I didn’t really believe that I would be able to raise the required 240,000 hryvnias. But I decided to try, and I did. In 10 days, the required amount was accumulated on the card. I was very impressed by such great support: I’m a no-name girl from Instagram that nobody knows, and people heard my plea.
They asked me for help again. I thought if I could do it the first time, maybe I could do it again. So, little by little, in parallel with the budget I had, I closed some issues on my own. In the autumn, the company sent funds for a separate large request, but the military who had approached me had not gone anywhere, they stayed. So I continued to raise money on my own, working on requests one at a time.
I returned to Ukraine in May 2023. The shelling and the blackout in 2022 did not scare me because I came home quite often and adapted. Of course, it shouldn’t be like this, but I understand who is responsible. I have anger towards the Russians, and I channel it into volunteering, because just complaining and doing nothing is a sign of weakness, and I don’t like or accept weakness. Either you do something to improve the situation or you don’t complain.
Are you still helping the defence forces?
Yes, I continue to support different units. First it was my friends, then friends of friends, and then the military itself advised me to contact them: ‘Nastya helped us, try to contact her’.
It’s hard to say no to another request, even though it’s getting harder to raise money every month. But I try not to refuse but to help, even if the queue is long, I just warn them that they might have to wait.
I do all the collections alone. And in the chat rooms I communicate with other volunteers about prices and places where it is better to buy this or that item.
I do not run several collections at the same time because I have a small audience of subscribers. Most of the people who subscribe are my former colleagues and friends, but there are also strangers who come through social media. They say they like my quirky posts. And I think I’m being clever and teaching them about life, while my subscribers comment that they needed just such verbal kicks (smiles).
I raise money for cars and their repairs, to buy thermal imagers, drones, radios, repeaters, tablets, batteries, starlinks, etc. I don’t raise money for tactical medicine because I don’t understand it and I’m not used to doing things badly.
The amount of a collection can range from 80 to 250 thousand hryvnias. Of course, I also donate to my own fundraisers (and not just my own).
In total, I have collected around eight million hryvnias so far. At the same time, I often feel insecure, especially when I look at the work of other big volunteers or foundations.
I like to get feedback. The military often write or call to thank me. They can send me a gift out of the blue. I often send them from the post office near my house, so they see my address and know where to send them. Recently they sent me a hand-painted T-shirt and a sweatshirt that said ‘Guardian Angel’. Once they sent me a trident-shaped pendant that had been specially ordered for me from a sketch. I was very touched. Sometimes a bar of chocolate is included in the certificate. I know how little time they have to sleep, and when they take the time to prepare a gift, it is very valuable. I have a special place in my home for thank you notes.
I often get scared when someone doesn’t contact me for a long time. This is the hardest part of volunteering for me: either not getting an answer, or getting an answer but from someone else… There have been several cases where I got a call saying that the person I was helping had died. It’s hard.
You seem to find it easy to collect money.
It’s just an impression. I don’t show, for example, the two or three hours a day I spend sending a long text message to a certain number of people asking them to support the collection with money or reposts. This technique I have discovered works for me and I call it ‘noble volunteer spam’.
I’m grateful to the stand-up comic and volunteer Vasyl Baidak, who occasionally reposts my collections to his audience, and then the cause moves forward more actively.
Often I want to throw away my mobile phone, delete my Instagram, go somewhere in the forest and sit there for six months without anyone touching me, without my telegrams beeping, without me hearing: ‘I need this urgently’, ‘This is broken again’.
But then I remember the reality in which I live, and as a person who is not in the army, I have to help in this way. I continue because I don’t understand how, in 2024, anyone with a Ukrainian passport in their pocket can’t be involved in the fight to keep their country alive. For me, it’s not a matter of choice, it’s the right thing to do, and I’m just doing what’s right.
If you scroll back through your Instagram to a certain time, you can see posts in Russian. Now you speak Ukrainian perfectly and make funny jokes in it. Was it a deliberate transition?
The transition took place in the first weeks after 24 February 2022. Even though I went to a Ukrainian school and knew Ukrainian, the Russian-speaking environment won out. I am very sorry that I had to experience the war to return to my mother tongue. I also regret that even this is not enough for some people.
Now, on principle, I don’t speak Russian at all. I have noticed that the military, who speak Russian to me when they meet me, switch to Ukrainian.
I have a tattoo ‘Dushnila’, I got it for a reason because I used to like telling people what was right and wrong. At some point I realised that it is better to set an example than to teach. Now I follow this principle both with the language and with volunteering.
Link to Anastasia’s Instagram Page
Translator: Ivan Chepaykin
