Description
Ukraine’s history of volunteering and charity work has been a strong source of its resilience to Russian aggression for over a decade. The Donbas War saw society collect to support humanitarian efforts in the East, while an underfunded military also saw crowdfunders support ad-hoc non-lethal aid such as bulletproof vests, reconnaissance drones, and blankets to the armed forces. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, however, participation in these efforts have expedited and adapted to the new wartime environment. Over time, aid has become more militaristic in nature, with greater crowdfunders raising money to supply items to the armed forces that can kill. First-person-view and one-way-attack drones, mortars, grenade launchers, and ammunition are such examples of the instruments that are actively crowdfunded and provided to the armed forces by civil society actors.
This paper traces the evolution in wiliness to donate, arguing that as the war has continued, donors have become more prepared to donate to causes that provide lethal aid to the armed forces of Ukraine. Interacting with discussions on participatory and digital war, it identifies and discusses the factors that impact donations to charitable organisations through two case studies: Come Back Alive Foundation and Dzyga’s Paw. The preliminary findings discover that two particular factors can be attributed to a rise in preparedness to donate to lethal causes: reactions to events of political animosity and a desensitisation to images of war. As the war has continued individuals have become desensitised to elements of the conflict, coming to celebrate graphic imagery of the death of an ‘enemy’ such as FPV drone footage, increasing willingness to donate to non-humanitarian causes. Similarly, donations are vastly impacted by political events, identifying President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s White House meeting with President Donald Trump and Vice-President J.D. Vance in February 2025 as a key flashpoint.
