Vitalii Torchynskyi from Kyiv is an IT professional. Before the full-scale invasion, his hobbies were programming and electronics, as it was both his favourite thing to do and a way to stay competitive on the job market.
Since the start of the full invasion, the volunteer spends all his free time – after work and on weekends – repairing drones. Over the course of a year, he has repaired more than 150 drones.
Because of Ukraine’s hostile neighbour, Russia, Vitaliy cannot enjoy his other favourite pastime, gliding, so he only flies drones and radio-controlled planes.
Below is Vitalii Torchynskyi’s direct speech.
My hobbies and work are electronics and programming
I have been repairing drones for a year, exclusively for the Armed Forces. I have the right and the desire to do this because I have a complete higher technical education. I graduated from the Faculty of Electronics at Kyiv Polytechnic University, having come to study from the city of Kremenchuk, Poltava region.
Electronics and programming have been my hobby since the 3rd grade. I liked taking electronic devices apart, seeing how they worked and putting them back together again. As time went by, I gained more and more experience and even repaired things that were broken before.
But most of all, I loved writing programs and seeing how they worked at a time when personal computers were just starting to appear. And when the era of computer games began, which captivated almost all teenagers, I wrote programs more than I played. I preferred to write low-level programs that interacted directly with the hardware. In those days there was no YouTube where you could watch a video and repeat the necessary operations. Instead, you had to open and study a huge amount of documentation, find the necessary microcontroller on sale, assemble the programmer, learn how to write a programme for it and flash it… It was a fascinating process.
I still remember my first program. It was a primitive flasher with seven LEDs that turned on according to the algorithm I had written. The fact that I was holding something in my hand that I had made myself motivated me to keep working on it, and I did.
I started working in the second year of my studies and I remember that I liked a Belgian company at a job fair and asked to do an internship there. Although I was quite young, they liked my work and invited me to join them in my third year.
Now I work for a Ukrainian IT outsourcing company.
Before the war, I used to work in my spare time. I am interested in learning new things about electronics and programming. These industries are developing extremely fast, so in order to be competitive in the labour market, to be able to work with new projects, you have to learn constantly, read new documentation, monitor the world of new technologies and know about new products. I am interested in all this, so I spend my free time on personal development and my hobby work.
Understanding that tomorrow may not come led us to volunteer
On the day of the full-scale invasion – 24 February 2022 – my wife and I found ourselves at our dacha near Kyiv, in the Bucha district, near Irpin. I woke up because I heard a distant explosion, and 10 seconds later a missile flew low over the house. I realised that everything was bad. I didn’t want to believe it, but I picked up my phone, opened Telegram, clicked on the first channel and read that a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine had begun.
Not understanding the scale of the invasion, and with the car filled up and some of my belongings packed, my wife and I set off for the west of the country. A day later we were already in the Lviv region, where we lived for three months until the Kyiv region was de-occupied.
My job allows me to work remotely. In addition to my main job, I earned extra money to help the army. My cousin and godfather are fighting, so I helped them buy ammunition.
I started volunteering because I realised that there might not be a tomorrow, that the situation at the front was getting worse every day, and I wanted to repay the Russians for the grief they brought to our country.
I have a 3D printer. A year ago, I saw on social media that volunteers were using it to print adapters, shanks and drops – devices that could be attached to a drone and, at the command of a flashlight, open its legs and send “gifts” to the Russians.
I started working in this area too. After a short time I had some experience, but I wanted to optimise the process. The problem was that the attachment to the shell and the tail were connected by a printed tube. This made the assembly quite bulky and inconvenient to transport: it could easily break. One day I had a bamboo skewer on my desk, and it occurred to me to use it to connect the mount to the tail, eliminating the need for a printed tube and making the product cheaper. It also allowed for a long enough shank extension, which stabilised the projectile and eliminated the need to launch the drone high, thereby increasing its accuracy.
I shared this idea with the Proven Cotton online community, which I decided to join. But at first the community was incredulous… To this day, our community still uses bamboo skewers to hold these elements together.
I started repairing drones, even though I had never done it before
One of the community members used to repair drones. He was bombarded with requests and was looking for someone who could also take on the restoration of these devices.
At the time, I had never repaired a single drone. But I had the equipment, I had the tools, I had a lot of experience in electronics design and programming. I thought: if you can make it, you can fix it. And I agreed.
First I studied video tutorials (videos that teach specific skills and provide very specific knowledge) and then I started to repeat what I had seen. After repairing a few drones, I was able to repair them blindfolded.
Each drone is unique, and the damage is also unique. So it takes a different amount of time to repair each one. By my count, I have repaired more than 150 drones in a year, and many more thermal imagers and remote controls.
I continue to work in IT to earn money to repair drones, which I do after work and at weekends from dawn to dusk. In my spare time, I can print the necessary parts on a 3D printer. I also give advice about drones or electronics.
It is extremely difficult to combine work and volunteering to such an extent, because you want to relax. But I can’t afford to, because I understand that a soldier waiting for a repaired drone is risking his life every minute. So I have only had two holidays in a year, after dealing with all the ‘rubble’, and they lasted a little less than a day because the equipment came back. My wife understands and supports me.
The military often ask me how much the repairs will cost. My main rule is that repairs are free for the military.
My friends know what I do, so they come to me with financial support without me asking. My card is available in the community, so anyone can send money there if they want.
I help different departments. It’s hard to say where I haven’t had ‘birds’ from. There is now an extremely large wave of damaged drones, so I warn you that you will have to wait 3-4 weeks (if your unit orders the repair of one of these drones – ed).
My motivation is to save the lives of Ukrainian soldiers
My philosophy is that the more machines fight, the less people die (except the Russians, of course). If there is a drone, it flies for reconnaissance, and if there is no drone, reconnaissance is done by fighting. So I do what saves people’s lives. And when the military sends me a video of a repaired ‘bird’ doing good, it gives me extra motivation.
As a token of gratitude, the defenders give me chevrons. I already have a collection of twenty, and each chevron has its own story.
Every token of gratitude I receive from the front gives me the creeps. I can think of several examples: when pilots from several squadrons signed their brigade flag for me, or when artillerymen wrote their wishes for our crazy neighbours on grenades and sent them to me.
I am registered at the military recruitment office. I have not left and will not leave the country. I spend all my free time effectively helping the front. I am currently involved in a new project. The only thing I can tell you about it is that, according to my documents, I am not in the army. My friends ask me if I’m afraid of being mobilised. In fact, there is no such fear. When they ask me what will happen if I am called up, I ask a counter-question: what will happen if the Russians knock on your door? If I run out of ways to help in the way I’ve told you, I might end up in a trench with a machine gun.
After Ukraine’s victory I would be interested in continuing to strengthen the country’s defence capabilities. And also to return to another of my favourite pastimes. Before the full-scale war, I used to fly gliders and had to get a private pilot’s licence. But the war changed everything: the skies were closed and the Russian military bombed the airfield. So I can only fly drones and radio-controlled planes. For the time being.
Translator: Ivan Chepaykin
