Yuriy Biriukov, ambassador of the NGO "Community Matters":
"The weather forecast is the best friend of the zampotil!
You see, I have a little bit of experience. And when I am asked for "lightweight boots made of young lamb skin, soaked in the milk of a virgin at full moon", I send such a soldier to a Russian ship. Or when I am asked for a "tactical magazine pouch in Multicam coloring" - it goes there, and I also add something heavy to it. Because it's a pig.
Collimators with Picatinny strips go there, thermal imagers for every soldier at a checkpoint, and so on. I'm talking about linear infantry units, not specialists. Although, it is a phenomenon that specialists do not ask for it - for years, they have been buying equipment for themselves (except for the inevitable cases of replacing what was lost under fire - no questions asked).
And here are the raincoats, and here are the motorized pumps for pumping mud out of the ditches, and the rubber boots, damn it. Rubber boots, Carl. Without the skin of a lamb! Without this tactical bullshit. They will not help in a trench flooded with spring showers. And lightweight boots will not save you!
Okay, this is nerve-wracking.
The invoice for equipment and all kinds of household items amounted to many hundreds of thousands of hryvnias, because when you work for several battalions, it is not otherwise. We had zeroes in our accounts - everyone sent money to buy helmets today. What to do? That's right, I went to Petro Poroshenko with the bills and then rushed to pick up the goods. It's a quick process here.
And so on every day. Without suffering from tactical coolness, we buy slippers and rubber boots, motor pumps for pumping out the liquid, food and fuel."