Võidutahe MTÜ

Critical transportation vans for Ukrainian Air Defence soldiers!

We have received two requests for help - one from an officer of the Ukrainian Air Defence force, and the other from the Kherson Air Defense unit. Each needs a passenger/cargo van for increased troop mobility and for performing important and urgent defence-related tasks.

The Ukrainian Air Defence force plays a key role in protecting people and infrastructure during the war, since the vast majority of threats to both come from the air. The invaders develop and build drones and missiles every day which are then launched at Ukraine. To repel them, and to keep adapting to the ever-changing threats they pose, teams of air defence soldiers need to be able to move very quickly along with their equipment to locations from which they can intercept incoming targets.

Extraordinarily, donors to this campaign will have the chance to meet a Ukrainian Air Defence officer who will personally visit Estonia to pick up these vans. This officer has a personal relationship with Estonia which predates the war - he lived in Estonia for 3 years before the full-scale invasion began in 2022, and returned to Ukraine to voluntarily re-enlist in the Ukrainian Armed Forces so he could defend his homeland.

Our volunteer Raivo Olev met him shortly before he left Estonia in 2022 to re-enlist, and has offered him and his units support through various campaigns over the last few years. The officer has also helped the Võidutahe team to establish many reliable contacts throughout the Ukrainian Armed Forces, among them the commander of Kherson Air Defence unit.

The meeting with this Ukrainian Air Defence officer in Estonia will be in May 2025, and all donors who provide their email addresses in the details of their donations to this campaign will be eligible to attend this meeting. Donors will be contacted through their provided email addresses with further details about the time and place of the meeting.

The first van will be provided to this Ukrainian Air Defence officer to augment his unit's mobility and responsiveness capabilities, and he will speak further about his work at the in-person donor meeting in Estonia.

The second van will be provided to a Kherson Air Defence unit which we have previously supported with essential life-saving equipment that has helped protect the people of Kherson from attacks by the invaders. During our most recent delivery of critical equipment to this unit in early April, we discovered that they have an urgent need for a passenger/cargo van to support moving both soldiers and their specialized and bulky equipment rapidly between different air defence positions during incoming enemy attack waves.