From February 1 to May 9, 2023, the "Come Back Alive" fund allocated more than UAH 2 billion to prepare for the summer offensive campaign of the Defense Forces.
This is stated in the press release of the fund.
"Each hryvnia of these more than 2 billion is regular donations that people and businesses sent to the fundʼs accounts outside of the projects," Taras Chmut, director of "Come Back Alive", noted.
Weapons became the largest item of expenditure. The army purchased and handed over 1,460 7.62 mm machine guns and a thousand ATGL-L3 hand grenade launchers for a total of UAH 417.4 million. Both batches of collective infantry weapons by "Come Back Alive" were directly contracted abroad, delivered, and after customs procedures, handed over to the Command of the Logistics Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Together with the General Staff, 2,460 weapons were distributed to 40 divisions.
In second place are drones; they were bought by 2,542 units of various models.
Also, 11,834 radio stations were purchased for the army for almost UAH 331 million. This figure is almost one and a half times larger than the total amount of funds that the fund accumulated for the Armed Forces in 2014-2022.
The fund also bought 2,306 units of thermal imaging optics and 93 new pickup trucks.
In addition to the above, thousands of units of auxiliary equipment were purchased and handed over to the Defense Forces — kilometers of cable, chargers, tablets, monitors, network, and mining equipment.
- The "Come Back Alive" fund was founded by IT manager Vitaly Deinega in March 2015. At the end of 2020, he retired from operational work. The foundation was headed by Taras Chmut. Seven years before the full-scale invasion, the "Come Back Alive" fund raised 200 million hryvnias for the army. For 50 days of the great war — 3.2 billion.
- In the summer of 2022, the foundation became the first in Ukraine to transfer Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial systems to the needs of the army.