Forget Potato Salad, These Guys Are Crowdfunding for Drones and Weapons

A digital mock-up of the drone financed by the Kickstarter campaign.

Chances are your Kickstarter quota this week has been filled by the silly potato salad story. While the guy behind that campaign continues to rack up the thousands, some Ukrainian IT technicians have quietly been raising the funds to keep their beleaguered, underfunded army in supplies.

The People's Project – started by David Arakhania, an IT executive from Kiev – has managed to raise the £20,000 needed to build a surveillance drone (which is already in use, monitoring the movement of pro-Russian forces along Ukraine's border) and now hopes to raise extra money to go towards more drones and equipment for their troops. I gave David a call to find out how the project got to where it is, and where he hopes it will go from here.

David (left) at an event where he provided new equipment to paratroopers that had been funded by the Kickstarter campaign.

VICE: Hi David. Tell me how you came up with The People’s Project.
David Arakhania: I’m just an IT guy. When the conflict with Russia really blew up two and half months ago, I visited the new Crimean border with friends. I was shocked. They didn’t have any essentials and were ashamed at how poorly equipped they were, so we came back home and started to think how we could help them. I spent £5,800 of my own money to buy 200 pairs of tactical glasses to protect their eyes. But that was just a start. As we’re IT guys, we obviously know about Kickstarter and online fundraising, so thought, 'Why not create a Kickstarter for the army?' We quickly made the website, and within two weeks we raised more than £58,000 for equipment for those guys on the border. We bought everything they needed to serve the country efficiently.

And making a drone was the next obvious move.
Yes – all the modern armies have them. As a country we aren’t prepared to have Russia as an enemy. We have the longest unprotected border in Europe – more than 750km – over which the Russians are constantly passing lots of things to support the terrorists [Russia has denied providing weapons or soldiers]. The best way to protect from that is to have drones flying all along the border and analysing any movement.

My concern was whether we could build a drone that could be competitive, or whether we should buy a ready-made one from America or China. We met some engineers in Kiev, and once we realised they were capable of building the device we started the campaign. It took about two weeks to raise the money. The drone is already patrolling the border, doing its job.

But we can't see any photos of it?
No, they won’t allow us to film the drone or take pictures. The picture circulating on the web is not the real drone – it’s much bigger, much more powerful than that. It must be kept secret, because pictures would obviously help the enemy. However, next week we'll have videos from the drone that we'll have permission to publish.

And now you’re funding another drone.
Yes, we’re currently building a plane drone. The first one was a helicopter. Once we’ve built these two we have approval from the Ministry of Defence to finance mass production of the drones. We need around 55 in total.

Who are the people contributing cash to the Kickstarter?
Just regular Ukrainian people. We were stupid enough to have the site in Ukrainian, but we're in the process of changing it to support English language versions, which will encourage donations in other countries.

Have you had much opposition to the project?
Yes. Russians are being paid to try to destroy our image online by commenting on anything we upload. I have a couple of connections who tell me for sure that the IT companies are being paid £1.75 per comment. Each one will say that Ukraine is bad, the new power is not legal and so on. They're doing this on mostly English-language sites, such as the Guardian.

What will you crowdsource for after the drones?
We’re preparing a new project called Aerospace. We needed something cheaper than the first drone, as we’re still on a limited budget and need to equip as many posts as possible. It’s a big balloon equipped with the old cameras, but not wireless. It’s connected via wire to the top of the post, which makes it like an observation tower. It will be about 300 metres high and will observe 360 degrees from the post. The budget for these will be less than £580, so we hope to raise enough money to equip every block post. Right now, there are about 100 posts in total along the border.

A truck full of Russian weapons captured by Ukrainian paratroopers

The association agreement has been signed with the EU. In your opinion is the situation between Russia and Ukraine getting worse?
Absolutely. It’s funny, because this revolution started because the president didn’t sign the association agreement. When we finally signed it recently it was merely a regular news event – everyone is focused on the war right now. So we’ve stepped backwards, as the priorities are now different.

Finally, where do you see The People’s Project in a year’s time, if the war is still ongoing?
Firstly, to expand into other areas and accept other projects from volunteers. We’re trying to bring all the initiatives into one place so that a potential donor can decide whether to fund a drone, or a life vest for a soldier, or a helmet, or food and so on.

Secondly, we'll unite and bring awareness to other humanitarian projects in Ukraine that don’t have the interest or traffic – for example, the huge stray dog problem. We've made a start with this. Right now we're helping to get thousands of refugees from Eastern Ukraine to other parts of Ukraine, and help them to move their things, to find real estate and connect with employers.

Good work. Thanks, David.

@hannahrosewens

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