Grant Coursey–Kyiv

October 9, 2023

Last year, somewhere on the Donbas front of the war in Ukraine, Andriy Karpachenko, a soldier in Unit A2424, applied pressure to an Israeli bandage pressed to the bloody hip wound of his fellow soldier. While on combat duty, the men came under fire and Karpachenko’s companion was shot. Thankfully, because Karpachenko had the right equipment and acted quickly, he saved his unit member's life.

After the event, Karpachenko put together a short, thirty-second video to thank the group that provided the Israeli bandage, because the bandage that saved his companion's life was not issued by the Ukrainian government. Instead, it was provided by Sunflower Seeds Ukraine (SFSU), an initiative of the nonprofit Ukrainians of Colorado.

The initiative has many operations but one of its largest and longest-running is the procurement and distribution of defensive, medical, and other non-lethal aid to Ukraine’s frontline defenders.

SFSU was started by Andriy Zakutayev, a 38-year-old scientist with a Ph.D. in physics who lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife Viktoriya (who is also heavily involved in SFSU), their 6-year-old daughter, Lina, and their 18-month-old son, Oskar.

Andriy asked to be referred to by his first name, which is Ukrainian in origin, preferring it to his surname, which is of Russian origin.

Andriy’s support of democracy in Ukraine began in 2004 when, as a student at the Lviv Polytechnic National University, Andriy took part in the Orange Revolution, a spontaneous protest in Kyiv’s Independence Square where students, activists, and others camped out to protest the discrepancy between exit polls and the results of Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election.

“We said, ‘Maybe we’ll just hop out of the train in Kyiv and hang out there and see what happens for the next couple of days.’ Basically, wait for the official number [of votes] to be announced and see if they line up with [exit] polls or not,” Andriy said. “And then, when it was announced [I thought] ‘That doesn’t match up again. I guess we are staying here in this square until you guys do it right.’”

After months of eating, sleeping, and living in the square, Andriy had met his future wife and Ukraine’s supreme court had overturned the election results.

In 2014, enraged at seeing his home country invaded, Andriy started sending aid to Ukraine’s armed forces during the Revolution of Dignity and Russia’s subsequent invasion of Crimea and the Donbas region. He explained that while he had provided aid, it was not as the leader of a well-designed organization but simply as someone with friends and contacts in Ukraine trying to be helpful. On February 24, 2022, that rage came back, but this time, Andriy said, it was overshadowed by shock.

As the shock wore off, Andriy looked to repeat the work he had done in 2014 and send what he could to help in Ukraine’s struggle. Unlike in 2014, Andriy was able to raise roughly $10,000 USD in a matter of days. In the first few weeks of the war, he had successfully sent two hundred NATO-grade individual first aid kits (IFAKs) to Ukraine through Poland by post.

Unfortunately, the second batch of aid got held up by Polish customs. So, the organization adapted and found a way to send some of the stockpiled aid with volunteers traveling to Poland to help the millions of refugees fleeing Ukraine.

The new transport method worked and would become the go-to method for SFSU moving forward. Through Lufthansa Airlines, travelers who volunteered through SFSU’s website could bring five bags of humanitarian aid with them, sometimes more, as long as each bag was under fifty pounds.

With the first push to deliver aid finished and the early days of the war over, Andriy said he realized he would need to organize his efforts to continue to help effectively. Less than a month into the war, he officially started SFSU.

“The best ideas come to me when I exercise,” Andriy said. “I came back from the gym at 10 p.m. or whenever, when everybody else at home was already sleeping. [I] sat down at my laptop, made the Facebook page and the website, both called Sunflower Seeds Ukraine. I wrote the first post for the organization’s Facebook and more or less… described why this is important and what everybody could do to help, and that was the beginning.”

Andriy said he and others in the organization felt the urge to pick up arms and fight on the front lines for Ukraine, but with a young daughter and six week old son at the time of the invasion, that path was not viable for him. Instead, he sees his work with SFSU as the service he can provide to Ukraine, outfitting the men who do fight with equipment that has on many occasions saved their lives.

Although SFSU was founded by volunteers in Ukraine, Poland, Germany, and the U.S., most SFSU volunteers are in the United States, where the group does most of its fundraising and sources much of the aid it sends to defenders.

And they are all volunteers. Being 100 percent volunteer-run is a great source of pride for the organization. Every dollar donated is used to buy and ship aid to soldiers in need or to fund one of their other initiatives.

Early on, fundraising took the form of social media posts asking for donations, then using that money to buy gear and equipment soldiers needed and sending it off.

Today, the group’s fundraising involves more planning and structure. This summer, the organization hosted or was involved with numerous events, including having one of the main booths at the second annual Colorado Ukrainian Festival, organizing “Dine-out for Ukraine,” an event where participating local restaurants donated a portion of their profits to SFSU for a day, and setting up a booth on the steps of Colorado’s capitol building on Ukraine’s Independence Day.

Despite these new fundraising techniques, a good portion of their funding still comes from social media and website donations, and although they have new initiatives, the bread and butter of SFSU’s work is still sending equipment and gear to Ukrainian soldiers who need it. The organization accepts donations from around the world, and as their social media presence grows, so too does the international make-up of their regular donors.

As of September 30, 2023, SFSU had sourced and sent over $570,000 USD in equipment and gear through their various initiatives. That includes more than 17,600 pieces of medical aid, 17,300 uniform components, 1,200 optical devices, and 2,600 pieces of tactical gear.

Unfortunately, as the war goes on, the donations start to dwindle, Andriy said. SFSU volunteers are being forced to get creative in the ways they buy aid for Ukrainian defenders in an attempt to make fewer donations go further.

SFSU acquires the gear it distributes from many sources. Some is bought from government websites selling off old military gear, some is donated secondhand, and some is bought from private sellers.

One of SFSU’s main suppliers is a military surplus merchant and U.S. military veteran named Derek Aker. Aker had been stockpiling military surplus and selling it on eBay for years, but he saw his sales jump when he started selling to non-profits like SFSU trying to deliver aid to Ukraine. These organizations now make up almost all of Aker’s business.

At first, Aker itemized each piece of equipment and gear he sold to these military-focused non-profits, but as he learned more about the war and became more invested in the soldiers who were fighting it, he began offering his goods at outrageous discounts to SFSU.

Andriy calls Aker one of SFSU’s biggest donors for the discounts he provides to the non-profit.

One of the stories that stuck with Aker the most was that of a young soldier from last fall. Aker helped provide winter gear that was far better than the soldier's military issue and would keep him warm and dry going into the first winter of the war. Aker received back a picture of the young man resplendent in his new gear, thanking Aker for providing it and talking about what a difference it made. Two months later the soldier died in Bakhmut. He was nineteen.

“Those are super painful, but it is almost just as painful for [it] to be an older guy with kids for me, you know? I cry for all of them. I can’t even—I mean, nineteen is tragic.” Aker said. “It just pisses me off. But, you know, an older dude with a couple of kids [dying], it pisses me off too.”

Around his living room and kitchen, signed flags from other thankful units can be found. Aker says it means a lot to him that the gear he has can make such an impact on the soldiers’ lives.

Before leaving with a car packed to the brim full of uniforms, boots, body armor, winter tarps, and more, Andriy took a video of Aker. In it, Aker wishes the soldiers luck and says they have more aid coming, tapping one of the bags in the car for emphasis.

Aker had no ties to Ukraine before the war but now he is invested in the country, its struggle, and especially its people. He is not alone.

Eeva Ilveskero, a Finnish national living near Helsinki, said she feels like Ukraine is fighting in place of countries like Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and others. She said she believed Russia would not be satisfied with just taking Ukraine.

Since May, 2022, Ilveskero has been donating to SFSU’s Patreon, a website that allows patrons to set up recurring donations to their organization(s) of choice. She discovered SFSU through a video on famous defender Yuri Kochevenko’s social media.

She said she chose to donate because while she could not help physically, she felt she needed to help in some way. SFSU’s transparency is what made her decide it was an organization worth her support. She also donates to other non-profits seeking to provide aid to Ukraine.

SFSU’s transparency was also the reason Japanese donor Akiko decided she would support the organization. She has been a member of the organization’s Patreon for more than a year. At the beginning of the war, she wanted to donate directly to the Ukrainian government, but found it to be a difficult process and one that would not get aid to frontline troops as quickly as she wanted. From there, she looked into organizations that focused on direct donations to units or soldiers and found Sunflower Seeds Ukraine, as well as several other organizations she said she donates to.

“When the war started, I asked my husband if we could donate all of our savings. I didn’t want to grow old in a world where Russia could win.” Akiko said. “As a human being, I don’t understand how anyone could see what’s going on [in Ukraine] and not help.”