As the days get colder and darker, we have been doing our best to help our fellow Ukrainians prepare. As you can imagine, the winters in Ukraine can be bitterly cold and magnify the need for basic necessities.
It is also clear that the winter cold will be used indiscriminately by Russia as a weapon in this war and the missile strikes targeted at the energy sector are coming.
CSUF has been working since the summer to prepare for the coming cold. As with many parts of the world, the cost of supplies has increased steadily and our early preparation has allowed us to optimize the costs so that your donations will provide for as many as possible.
A lot of our support is focused on the elderly as they are not able to obtain these materials themselves and they are some of our most vulnerable. Winter would have been tough for many of them without CSUF. With so much devastation and suffering, the least we can do is provide some warmth. Firewood and stoves are two of the most critical supplies needed at this time.
These are photos of some of the elderly people who have received the desired support from us this autumn. They are all single and they do not have any children to help them. Their income is less than 100USD monthly. What would they do this winter without your help???!
In addition to the firewood, we keep securing heaters that run on oil.
We receive the pictures like the ones you see below from different units. It’s what the stoves are like in most of the abandoned houses where soldiers stay after they return to have some rest after defending their positions in trenches:
The soldiers know the winter ahead will be cold and wet and muddy but they are grateful for any small reprieve where they have access to some warmth. The heaters can be installed in both the dugouts
and houses. This is a thank you video from the soldier of one of the units of the 100th Brigade of Territorial Defence:
Special thank you from Oksana Tkach and her children Roman and Domenica for your support. They were featured in the previous update . Their husband and father Denys was among the 1st casualties of the hot war in February 2022. At this time, they are not receiving any state support and we are doing our best to help in different ways, including warm clothing for winter.
We have kept helping the soldiers and here are the thank you photos for the items we deliver: Starlinks to secure connection, light bulletproof vests and helmets to try to save lives, power stations and generators which are an indispensable source of electricity in the remote areas, tools to fix their vehicles, night vision devices, protective headphones, and many other things.
The electronic devices that we keep delivering and that you can see in the photos below help the soldiers of the engineer combat unit of the 14th Mechanized Brigade to conduct distant mine clearing.
Your support makes their jobs safer and it helps to save lives.
These and many other people are so grateful for the support you continue to show the people of Ukraine.