The Serhiy Prytula Charitable Foundation has received the most requests from the Defence Forces for drones. These include civilian drones, FPVs, and other devices with various technical characteristics. The second most requested items are electronic warfare equipment.
Electronic warfare is needed to protect against Russian means in many processes, as the enemy is also developing the use of drones. Serhiy Prytula said this during the discussion "How to win the war: prospects for Ukrainian industry" organised by LB.ua and EFI Group.
"The enemy, unfortunately, is not standing still in the development of UAVs - this is a very serious threat," the volunteer explained.
The Foundation has been tracking innovations in electronic warfare production for about a year and follows the testing of new equipment.
Prytula explained that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to electronic warfare - it is a matter of combining various means of combat to cover a specific area of the frontline to protect people or preserve equipment.
"Some areas of procurement of this or that things first go through the volunteer environment, then the state becomes interested in it. "I'm sorry for the template, but 'wedding drones' [Mavic] were initially purchased by tens of thousands of volunteers, and then the state started buying them," he recalled.
Prytula says the same applies to FPV, electronic warfare and aircraft-type strike drones.
Separately, the founder of the volunteer foundation noted that there are questions about the rational use of taxpayer funds. He said that his foundation is engaged in repairing trophy vehicles that have been shot down by the defenders.
"The guys fix up Russian equipment, give it to us, and we repair it. "In a year and a half, we have transferred 53 units of armoured vehicles to the frontline... Nine T-72 tanks and Smerch MLRS are not armoured vehicles, but still. A year and a half ago, I received a call from representatives of one of the state-owned defence companies offering to buy their new product - they had made a heavy infantry fighting vehicle on the basis of a T-62 tank, and I asked them about the price... "Well, we didn't pull it out of the blue," they tell me. I already feel that something is wrong. I was given a figure of 17,200,000 hryvnyas. Actually, if you look at the nomenclature, at a piece of equipment, a heavy infantry fighting vehicle may cost that much, everything would be fine, if not for one small thing: last year we made exactly the same heavy infantry fighting vehicle based on T-62 for 1,300,000 hryvnyas," said Serhiy Prytula.
He also added that the area that receives the least donations is command and staff vehicles - they are trying to cover this need with business contributions.