2023 - year of war, year of help
In Prague on January 20, 2024
In 2023, we woke up every day aware of Russia's ongoing aggression against Ukraine. And also with the knowledge that it is within our power - thanks to dozens of large and hundreds of small donors - to help the attacked country and the people living in it. And so we helped!
In the twelve months of 2023, Team4Ukraine made fourteen humanitarian trips with material aid. Our journeys led both to relatively peaceful places, that is, where Russian bombs, rockets and drones attack only occasionally and not constantly, such as Vinnytsia, Kremenchuk or Dnipro, and to the immediate vicinity of the front, cities such as Kupjansk, Kherson, the vicinity of Bakhmut or Avdijivka.
In 2023, more than seventeen million crowns were collected from donors and converted into concrete and targeted material aid. We received a number of other things for free from various donors and sponsors. Below is a brief overview of the material aid provided.
But our help is not only about purchase and transport. Practically every week, negotiations took place with various institutions of the Czech Republic regarding aid to Ukraine, ensuring the smooth progress of humanitarian trips and the like.
The monitoring team, together with the Maidan Monitoring Information Center, participated in the documentation of war crimes. In 2023, we continued the analysis of knowledge obtained in the de-occupied territories of the Kharkiv region. Thanks to this, the analysts of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kharkiv managed to connect specific military operations and attacks documented by us in 2022 with the names of commanders and units that committed specific war crimes here. General Ruziňský, the commander of the entire group of the 11th Army Corps, was suspected of waging an aggressive war.
Work with witnesses to war crimes continued. Here we dedicated a large space to the Izjum case, where we began detailed work with witnesses to the bombing and occupation of the city. Some of these testimonies were already published in 2023. Criminological research on the differences in the behavior of the occupiers in individual liberated parts of Ukraine in the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson regions is related to this.
In the Kherson region, the monitoring team documented the effects of the Kachovské dam breach. We regularly informed the general public about the results. Round tables were held in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
From initially only fragmentary information from the investigated municipalities and records of attacks on Ukraine, we got to witnesses of Russian crimes in the occupied territories, documents and objects left there by the occupying army. The exhumation of the victims, the testimonies of the survivors, the inspection of the objects where the Russian occupying power was based or the places it used as prisons and torture chambers gave us a glimpse again into the essence of the Russian deviant fascist regime and why no compromises and agreements with the Kremlin are possible.
The work of the monitoring team was presented, for example, in the U.S. at the invitation of the American side. Department of State, U.S. Department of Justice in Congress, in the UN and on the ground of academic and non-governmental organizations.
An exhibition of dozens of large-format photographs, created by T4U together with the Maidan Monitoring Information Center, documenting war crimes and damage to civilian infrastructure in Ukraine was presented in Brussels, Prague and Bucharest. Monitoring projects were supported by grants from the International Visegrad Fund and the US Embassy in Prague.
As part of the humanitarian trips, the private vehicles of the members of the association and the team van nicknamed "Vidma" covered a total of over one hundred thousand kilometers. The time devoted to the support of Ukraine is no longer accurately calculated by anyone, but it is certainly thousands of hours of human work. All in free time after work and other duties and of course for free.
We have always delivered all aid directly into the hands of representatives of nineteen different specific units of the Ukrainian armed forces or civil organizations. These were always things that these organizations or units requested themselves and that they listed as their priority need.
In the second year of the war, we provided assistance both to our long-term partners, such as the 41st Mechanized Brigade, the 503rd Separate Marine Infantry Battalion, the children's home in Vinnytsia, the children's hospital in Kherson, and the rehabilitation clinic for war veterans in Kremenchuk, as well as many others, such as for example, the orphanage in Mahala, the point of unbreakability in Kherson or rescuers in the city of Dnipro.
We also strived to improve and make our communication with the public more attractive. During 2023, a new website was launched (www.team4ukraine.eu), the podcast "Team4Ukraine podcast" was created, or regular communication took place on association profiles on the social networks Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, TikTok (www.facebook .com/team4ukraine/ , www.twitter.com/Team4Ukraine1 , https://www.instagram.com/team4ukraine.eu/ , https://www.tiktok.com/@team4ukrainecz).
We met the numerous wishes of supporters by launching an e-shop with "merch" products from Team4Ukraine. All profit from the sale of goods is used to finance the aid and its transport to the site.
We would like to thank everyone who supported our activities in 2023 in any way - with a financial or in-kind donation, by spreading information about our collections, with good advice, a handshake, a kind word or in any other way. It is, together with spreading the good name of the Czech Republic and hundreds of stories in which we participate directly or indirectly together with our kind donors in Ukraine, the greatest and at the same time the only reward for us. And also motivation to persevere in this help.
We are Team4Ukraine, we bring help and hope to where it is needed.
Thank you once again!
BASIC OVERVIEW OF MATERIAL AID DELIVERED IN 2023:
We imported 18 cars:
11 "civilian" ambulances
3 special armored Hummer ambulances
4 off-road vehicles (jeeps, offroads)
We delivered to military and civilian doctors, hospitals and clinics:
190 hospital beds
5 incubators
3 ultrasounds
5 defibrillators
6 ECG
anesthesia devices
special rehabilitation means
but also maybe 20 boxes of adult diapers, thousands of surgical gloves and a lot of other medical supplies
At their request, we supplied the medics of the ZSU units fighting at the front:
more than a thousand tourniquets to stop massive bleeding
a similar number of Israeli and other pressure bandages
hundreds of thermofoils
dozens of stretchers
14 blood warmers
intraosseous drills and needles
IFAKs and medical backpacks
and many other special military first aid medical supplies (TCCC)
According to information from our Ukrainian partners, the ambulances, medical devices and material we supplied saved, without exaggeration, the lives of hundreds of children, civilians and soldiers.
To Kherson, affected by flooding after the Russians blew up the dam of the Nová Kakhovka dam, we delivered a motor boat and a powerful marine engine, as well as 16 crates of disinfection - Czech Sava.
As the Russians attack Ukraine's energy infrastructure, we have imported to civilians and soldiers:
17 power station
19 charging stations
30 direct heaters
At their request, we supplied the soldiers fighting at the front:
16 thermal imaging
12 ballistic protections
160 pairs of insulated shoes
40 trench stones
9 drones and 29 accessories for them
15 computers or laptops, 17 monitors, 13 tablets
thermal underwear, socks and other winter equipment
We delivered to children in Ukrainian children's homes and orphanages in Vinnytsia and elsewhere:
20 boxes of toys
45 boxes of baby diapers
85 boxes of clothes and shoes
baby beds
other equipment that the staff asked us for (washing machine, dryer, exercise bike, walking belt, trampoline)
And much, much more…
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