Ukrainian volunteers sell war trophies from the battlefield to raise funds for the front
In the corner of an outdoor shop called Komanda-Ex in central Kyiv, alongside backpacks and sleeping bags, you can find the remains of a Russian drone, artillery shell casings and name patches once worn by Russian soldiers.
At the back, behind a curtain, lie parts of a crashed plane. All of the items are for sale as part of a volunteer-led fundraiser aimed at turning the supposed war trophies into money to buy new equipment for front-line troops.
“Most of the trophies, 90 percent, we captured during our offensive campaigns, when the Russians were retreating,” says Petro Shamborovskyi, a volunteer who normally works as a real estate developer but has spent most of his time collecting donations and visiting soldiers at the front since the start of the large-scale Russian invasion.
He says the brigades he and other volunteers are associated with have been storing items for them, many of which were captured on the battlefield after Ukraine liberated a wide swath of the Kharkiv region in the fall of 2022.
Souvenirs from the battlefield
Throughout history, soldiers and military personnel have kept enemy weapons and equipment as personal souvenirs and historical artifacts.
While some items – such as some of the thousands of rifles and artillery pieces captured by the Canadian Corps during World War I – end up in official museum collections, others remain in the possession of private individuals or are sold to private collectors.
A communications spokesperson for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry told CBC News that the public had been very interested in buying war trophies, especially in the first months of the invasion, as the money is normally used to buy equipment for troops on the front lines.
From parts of crashed planes and bullet-riddled helmets to uniform patches, a volunteer group in Kyiv is selling Russian items found on the battlefields to raise money for the war effort and buy drones for Ukraine.
Shamborovskyi estimates that this group has so far earned tens of thousands of dollars by selling the items to Ukrainian and international buyers.
He and other volunteers have used the funds to buy drones and GPS jamming devices, but he says the flow of war trophies has dried up because Ukraine is now largely on the defensive along the 1,300-kilometer front line.
“We are not attacking. So we have no way of capturing Russians and taking items from them,” Shamborovskyi said in an interview with CBC News in Kyiv in June.
War trophies for sale
But there are still war trophies lying around the store for sale.
Two flags serve as doormats in front of the store: one is Russian, the other represents the self-proclaimed, Russia-backed Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine, which is not recognized by the vast majority of countries.
In a hallway hangs a battered street sign of the city Bachmuta bullet hole in one corner.
After the 97th Brigade of Ukraine shot down a Russian plane, some of the pieces made their way to the volunteer team in Kyiv. They have since been made into magnets and attached to boards.
The most popular items are Russian patches, which are usually sewn onto uniforms and cost around $150.
According to Shamborovskyi, there is great interest in memorabilia from the Wagner military group, but there is little of it, because many of the fighters did not wear anything that would identify them as members of the private mercenary army that fought the bloody battle for Bakhmut.
personal items
Patches from the Russian police and military hang on the wall of the shop, including a nameplate that reads AA Romanov. When Shamborovksyi is asked if it feels weird to have a nameplate that either came from the uniform of a dead Russian soldier or was found among abandoned equipment, he shakes his head.
“They are … enemies who have come to kill Ukrainians,” he said.
“So there are no emotions. Our job is to help the front-line fighters survive.”
NATO has announced a new military aid package for Ukraine, including the delivery of long-promised American-made F-16 fighter jets, and Canada announced plans to replace its aging submarine fleet.
He notes that interest in these objects has waned among Ukrainians. He attributes this to the public being “exhausted and tired” of the ongoing war. However, there appears to be continued interest from international collectors.
Every few weeks, a former British paratrooper who wishes to be known only by his nickname Babbs for security reasons receives a shipment of war items from Ukraine.
When he left the military, Babbs started a clothing company called Apostle Tactical and now tries to sell the things he gets from Ukraine through his military and retail connections.
The latest shipment included four Russian helmets seized in Klishchiivka, a village six kilometers southeast of Bakhmut.
In a video shared on social media, Babbs points out a gaping bullet hole on the front of one of the helmets and says each of them would be a one-time purchase for someone who wants “an authentic piece of history” or someone looking for a cool item for their “man cave or bar.”
Interest of international buyers
Babbs told CBC News he learned about the Komanda-Ex team after seeing a post online and eventually purchasing a Russian flag that had been taken down from a cell tower in Bakhmut. It now hangs in his office in Northampton, England.
He estimates he has raised the equivalent of $7,000 Canadian. All of the money he receives from selling the items goes to the Ukrainian volunteers. Babbs says he receives videos and photos of the items before the shipments arrive so he can contact the collectors.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky noted that much of the world was eagerly awaiting the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in November, but at the NATO summit on Tuesday he said his country could not wait until then for the “strong decisions” needed to repel the Russian invasion.
The shipments are now being transported out of the country via a detour after the Ukrainian postal service stopped processing the shipments, according to Babbs.
Shamborovskyi explains that this is because the postal service treats all shipments as weapons of war and refuses to send them from Ukraine.
In Babbs’ case, the helmet shipment was brought out of the country by Lithuanian volunteers, who then took the package to the post office from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.
There are no helmets for sale in the store in Kiev. They usually sell out quickly and can be sold for several hundred dollars.
With demand for other products declining, Shamborovskyi says they’re trying to get creative. On a shelf in front of a row of insulated water bottles are candles made from the casings of 40mm grenades.
The most valuable object of the group came from Soledar, before Russian troops bombed the salt mining town in January 2023. Ukrainian troops left the area, taking with them a heavy model of a train made of salt.
Shamborovskyi hopes it will raise at least $10,000.
If the salt train doesn’t sell, he jokes, they have an ambitious plan for the post-war period.
“After the win we’ll have a tequila party.”
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