The volunteers fighting back against Putin by weaving camouflage for Ukraine ...Middle East

Stitch by stitch, volunteers in the heart of Kyiv, are crafting life-saving camouflage nets, “ghillie suits” and helmet covers for soldiers on Ukraine’s front line.

Starting out as a local group offering mutual support to those who stayed in the capital’s central Pechersk district in the days after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the Kitty Pechersk volunteer community has now grown to hundreds of members.

“We had a network of volunteers who wanted to do something,” says Kateryna Maistrenko, 45, one of the founders of Kitty Pechersk, or Cave Cats. “We choose to make camouflage for snipers and then found other volunteers who knew how to do this in the best way.”

Used primarily by snipers to blend in with their background, ghillie suits, also called kikimoras in Ukrainian, are nets covered with woven stripes of fibres that cover the body and head.

The vast majority of people who reach out to Kitty Pechersk have no previous experience in weaving and come from different backgrounds and ages to learn this skill.

“A lot of volunteers say it’s very good for their mental health because your hands are busy – you’re not scrolling on your phone, it’s like meditation. It’s good to get together and do something around one idea for the victory [of Ukraine],” adds Maistrenko.

Since February 2022, the team of volunteers have woven more than 2,200 ghillie suits, 880 camouflage nets, 2,900 helmet camouflage covers and produced 7,200 trench candles (inset above) which provide warmth and light to soldiers.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has run for more than 1,000 days and the demand for camouflaged clothing remains high.

“One sniper camouflage can take a team of five people around three days,” says volunteer Snezhana Ishtenko, 55. “Just the hood is three to four hours, doing very delicate work. The process is very long.”

Volunteers with their materials (Photo: [email protected])

At the weekly workshops, a lot of time is spent by volunteers cutting and weaving 1cm-wide and 25cm-long strips of fabric onto the nets. Different sizes of camouflage nets are made to fit the needs of the military, with most normally reaching either 5x7m or 12x8m.

Ishtenko’s volunteering started after the Euromaidan protests in 2013, long before the founding of Kitty Pechersk and the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. “Back then the war wasn’t here, it was far away in the Donbas.”

When Kitty Pechersk first started, Ishtenko would try to volunteer every working day for three or four hours. She often found herself working with Ukrainians who were displaced and fleeing from occupied territories.

‘They lost everything, but they don’t lose hope’

“They lost everything, but they don’t lose hope that they will return to their home,” she adds.

It’s not just practical weaving skills that volunteers like Ishtenko gain. “A lot of foreigners come from around the world, from America to England and China, helping improve our speaking skills in different languages.”

For Ishtenko, working alongside other Ukrainians who are united in the goal of supporting frontline soldiers has helped foster a close-knit local community.

“Kitty Pechersk is a second family,” says Ishtenko, who is originally from Bulgaria but moved to Ukraine 34 years ago. “People bring in sweet things, cookies and tea. Everybody’s coming with an open soul and an open heart.”

“I find real, life-long friends here. We have a motto: ‘even one knot can save a life’. It’s thanks to the volunteers and the support of other countries that Ukraine is holding on because the situation now is very hard and it’s very dangerous.”

It’s not just Ukrainians who support Kitty Pechersk, with Eric Haar, from Texas, becoming one of a growing number of foreign volunteers, after finding Kitty Pechersk through a volunteering website. Haar, who was based in Kyiv during the pandemic and returned to the city in September 2023, now leads international engagement for the organisation and sees it as the ideal chance to give back to the community in Kyiv.

“There is a lot of personal pride that comes with seeing a net go from just an empty shell on a wooden rack to being filled with the camouflage netting,” he says.

“As you make progress, volunteers can see we have just completed a net that is going to go directly to protect the lives of the men fighting on the front lines – it’s very gratifying.”

Now, as the temperatures get colder in Ukraine, production of trench candles is ramping up. Similar to the candles used in the Second World War, these candles are made from empty tin cans filled with corrugated cardboard and paraffin wax.

Unlike camouflage netting, it’s quick to produce trench candles, according to Daryna Oleksiivna, 17, a volunteer who teaches workshops where candles are made.

“We start to make candles, where cardboard is rolled into a can, and then our volunteers take them home and add in the wax,” she says. “One candle can be made in one to five minutes. You need to do it very carefully, so the cardboard needs to be a specific height.”

Master classes are held regularly in order to meet demand for the candles, which can dry out a trench and boil water. With each candle burning for around five hours, a constant supply is being sent to the front line. “You can imagine how many candles just one group of soldiers needs,” says Oleksiivna. “We need to make a lot of them.”

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