March, 14, the Volunteer's Day in Ukraine

We are the volunteers. We are people of idea, action, and good will. It is always difficult with us. It is hard for the authorities, officials, leaders, and commanders at all levels. Why is it so? For we have the freedom to maneuver that the executives, being bound by statute, regulations, and salary, do not have. We have faced with this so many times for the last three years of war that one cannot count.

Coordinating our combat operations and maneuvers with the commanders of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the ATO command, we always had a freedom in relation to the obsolete army rules and soviet-type bureaucracy - the battalions were built as military necessity and our possibilities dictated us but not the instructions covered with gunpowder. We were armed with what could be obtained or made by our craftsmen's hands.

We are inconvenient as the authorities can't understand how they can influence us. Despite the daily fights with the enemy at the forefront we are constantly present in the information battles. The provocations were staged against us, then our fighters were arrested or a base of one of the battalions was surrounded.

We are still inconvenient now as we have the constitutional right to be at the forefront, to get wounded and die, but in the information zone we remain as "wearenotthere". What is the phenomenon of volunteer movement in Ukraine?

The basis of the volunteer movement - from a heartfelt assistance to the front and trenches at the line - is the sacrifices. That is the daily willingness to sacrifice: work, time, money, forces, health, and life. There are no saints among us. Our characters are damaged by the battles, the manners are distorted by the constant stress, and there is an uneasy temper. If we remove all this, as the husk, then each volunteer has one thing in common - the self-sacrifice.

And it is not us who should judge its amount or size - in the end only God knows what is bigger: a million from the rich or a last hryvnia from the widow. The true sacrifice doesn't expect "neither glory nor reward" because it is the spiritual essence of the human soul. Those people, who devoted their lives to enrichment, career, and comfortable living, have a difficulty to understand us at once.

And we do not expect the understanding! We hope for only one thing - all people of Ukraine, who have felt the responsibility or call of the heart to give something to the plundered Mother, will be unified. The idea of Nation's rebirth and building the national state - united and independent - would light so much the people's hearts that this fire would burn down all group interests and personal ambitions. Then everyone would understand what it means to be a volunteer.

We will win!