Category: Veteran entrepreneurs stories

Marko Melnyk, with the call sign “Viry” (‘’Whirlpool’’), will develop the “Intellectual Arsenal” project.

The veteran became one of the winners of the first #VARTO veteran business funding competition.

Marko was born and raised in the city of Kryvyi Rih. He participated in the Revolution of Dignity, then joined the “Right Sector” organisation and became a member of the revolutionary self-defence forces. He was wounded during clashes with “Berkut” police forces.

In 2014, Marko went to the front as a volunteer. He was a soldier of the reconnaissance unit of the “Azov” battalion. There he became the founder and editor-in-chief of the first front-line magazine in Ukraine.

Within a year, he became the driver of the medical service and the commander of a group of military journalists of the ideological service of the “Azov” regiment. Participant of the Shyrokyn operation. In 2016, he founded one of the first veteran publishing houses in Ukraine.

“The “Intellectual Arsenal” project will publish and distribute five editions of books that will provide Ukrainians, and in particular the military, who are currently defending Ukraine, with proper informational and intellectual materials,” says Marko.

According to the defender, such books are necessary to preserve the high morale of soldiers and civilians, and to orient society as a whole on its way to the victory and restoration of Ukraine after the defeat of the Russian occupiers.

“It is planned to publish books on the following topics: the history of Ukraine’s struggle for independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s during the collapse of the USSR; the world’s biggest successful military operations against terrorism; ideological foundations and the national idea of Ukraine; military memoirs of volunteers (veterans) who defended Ukraine since 2014; a poetic collection of veterans of the war with Russian Federation,” the veteran shares.

In 2022, Marko Melnyk became the vice president of the historical club “Kholodny Yar”. Photos are taken from the personal archive of Mark Melnyk

Veteran Myroslav Gai currently serves in the ranks of the First Separate Special Brigade named after Ivan Bohun. And his project, the winner of the #VARTO competition, is called “Bandera’s Eye”.

And his nearest ambitious plans include ousting Russian propagandist content from Ukrainian YouTube. Myroslav Gai is a veteran, journalist, actor, volunteer and public activist. At one time, he was an active participant in the Revolution of Dignity.

On May 2, 2014, as part of the 1st Reserve Battalion of the National Guard named after General Serhiy Kulchytskyi, he participated in the first battle near Sloviansk. On May 14, 2014, it was Myroslav Gai, together with the paratrooper of the 95th Zhytomyr airborne brigade, Serhiy Shevchuk, who raised the Ukrainian flag on the Sloviansk TV tower near Karachun mountain.

Now Myroslav is back in the army. Recently, he was awarded the Order of “Bohdan Khmelnytskyi”  of the III grade – for personal courage and selfless actions shown in the defence of the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and loyalty to the military oath. 

“Bandera’s Eye” is a YouTube project that posts short videos twice a week. In those videos, they explain current political and social phenomena and events in simple terms.

The goal of the project, as Myroslav explains: “Is popularising everything Ukrainian in the global informational space, countering fakes and manipulations. It is important to engage in the cultural education of the population. Every citizen should know basic things about the world, society and his country. They should understand the laws under which society exists, what are international organizations and why they were created. This will contribute towards the formation of a civil society of our nation. It is necessary to destroy the attitude of apoliticality, in order to make people  engaged in the social life of the country. We want to supplement the cultural sector of audiovisual art with high-quality, Ukrainian-language content.”

Myroslav and his team won a #VARTO competition for the development of Ukrainian-language content in order to overcome the Russian monopoly in the media field.

They plan to develop the YouTube channel as a business project, attract advertisers, create jobs for veterans, organize charity events for the Armed Forces, popularize charitable initiatives, etc.

Andriy Vasylchenko had a farm for 300 piglets in the Luhansk region – the Russians stole them. He cultivated 1,000 hectares of land – the Russians occupied them.

Mr. Andriy founded his farm back in 1993 in the Starobilsk district of the Luhansk region. The land was cultivated and sown with grain. Then the grain was transported to the ports of Berdyansk and Mariupol and sold to Turkey. He had his own auto park.

There was also income from the sale of pork – it was sold at the markets of the nearby cities of Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, and Rubizhne. With the full-scale invasion of the russians, Andriy Vasylchenko lost everything, his entire life’s work – hundreds of piglets, his land, and a fleet of vehicles. Now he is reviving his business, but this time in Zhytomyr Oblast.

And the Ukrainian Veterans Foundation helps him with this. With the full-scale invasion of the Russians, Andriy Vasylchenko lost everything, his entire life’s work – hundreds of piglets, hectares of land, and a fleet of vehicles. But now it is starting to work – already in Zhytomyr Oblast.

And the Ukrainian Veterans Fund helps him in this. The village where Mr. Andrii’s farm operated was, as he put it, “in a pocket”, because on one side it was just 100 km away from Voronezh region of Russia, and on the other side it was surrounded by the temporarily occupied territories of Luhansk re by Russia. On the morning of February 24, the first massive shelling began.

Firstly, Mr. Andrii evacuated his family to western Ukraine. On February 27, the Russians came to his neighborhood – they wanted him, because Mr. Andriy is a participant in the Antiterrorist operation: in May 2014, he joined the ranks of the Starobilsk Self-Defense Force, and in June the “Aidar” battalion.

He took part in battles for Shchastya and Zolote-4 in his native Luhansk region. He served in the Armed Forces till the end of 2015.

“Everything in the house has been turned upside down. Even the vodka that was left after the New Year celebration was taken out of the kitchen from the cupboard. Meat and fish were taken out of the freezer. They broke the locks, stole all the equipment. 300 piglets were also taken away – they were loaded and taken away, they came six or seven times to pick up every single one,” he says.

His native village is now occupied, Mr. Andrii settled in Zhytomyr Oblast — life goes on.

He applied for the “VARTO” program from the Ukrainian Veterans Foundation, and received funding for the development of freight transportation services – he will transport grain. He has already bought a car, and plans to get a transport trailer.

The man dreams of returning to his native Luhansk region. He calls the disintegration of the Russian Federation as a state and the return of Ukraine to its official borders as a true victory in the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Oleg Kashlyak is one of the winners of the #VARTO veteran business financing competition program. He expands and develops the Merlion veterinary clinic in Lviv.

Oleg has been on the veterinary path since 1996, when he graduated from the Lviv Veterinary Institute. But in 2013, Oleg was overthrown from the position of senior veterinarian and appointed as the head of the fuel and lubricants department.

Therefore, from the beginning of the Maidan until 2016, Oleg was engaged in providing fuel to the Western grouping of troops. In the ATO, he went to the hottest spots of the front: from Debaltseve to Stanytsia Luhanska.

His gas station supplied all roadblocks where the National Guard of Ukraine was stationed. In 2016 Oleg organized his second laboratory of safe food products. It was designed to make sure that all products that went to the ATO, as well as those that were supplied to the National Guard, were safe. However, being in the ATO, he also took care of animals.

Oleg remembers: “There were many stray cats and dogs in the ATO. Together with the State Veterinary Service and the National Guard veterinarians, we vaccinated homeless animals in the area wherever the NGU served.” 

In 2022, the man retired due to health issues. Around this time, his son graduated from the Veterinary University, so they decided to start their own business. Father and son opened the “Merlion” veterinary clinic. This name is symbolic for both of them.

The Merlion is a lionfish, the symbol of Singapore. According to the horoscope signs, the son is Pisces, and the father is Leo. “That’s how we got our Dr. Merlion, with the tail of a fish and the head of a lion. The lion is wise and fiery, the fish is calm water. Two elements at the same time” 

In 2021 concurrently with opening the clinic, Oleg took business courses from the Ministry of Veterans Affairs. Then he made two business plans. One for the IOM (International Organization for Migration), which paid for his surgical table. The other is for the Lviv Regional State Administration, which bought him an artificial lung ventilation apparatus. 

Today, the development of the veterinary clinic has reached the second stage of the business plan – the equipment of the diagnostic and laboratory department.

“This stage is 60% of what we planned  to do with our clinic. I found out #VARTO program from Yulia Laputina (Minister of Veterans Affairs of Ukraine), who came to my clinic. I applied to the Ukrainian Veterans Foundation. Furthermore, I filled out an application for the #VARTO competition program and became one of those who received the financing. With the funds of UVF, I will pay for an ultrasound machine and a biochemical hemoanalyzer,” says Mr. Oleg.

Now the clinic has hired two students that will be trained to work with the new equipment. Previously, the veterinary clinic concluded a contract with the Lviv Veterinary University. Groups of students came, including foreign students. Oleg’s goal is to cover more university departments and to provide students practical knowledge. Oleg continues to maintain friendship with the military.

He says: “I do not have formal cooperation with them, but i maintain friendly relations. I am in contact with various power structures of the Armed Forces, and, of course, of the National Guard, because I served in together with them.”

Why do many people know a lot about the clinic? Oleg says it’s a good reputation that spreads quickly. “We constantly keep an eye on this question. because a good client service is often passed from mouth-to-mouth. Both cynologists and volunteers know about us. Because they brought us animals that we cared for, and then they recommended the Merlion veterinary clinic to their friends.” We are incredibly glad that we can support such clinics and the good deeds of our veterans.

“When my employee goes on vacation, I will replace him. So it will be easier to get out of all these situations. To rehab,” says Oleksandr Shilin, winner of the #WORTH contest.

Oleksandr is an ATO veteran. After returning to the army, he serves in Kharkiv region. Despite this, he is already planning what he will do after the war. That’s why he has opened a cool garbage collection business. Firstly, he rented a car. Now he is recruiting and not against working by himself.

Oleksandr believes that while working he will recover faster after the front. Oleksandr had been working at enterprises dealing with household waste in Kharkiv for 10 years. This is how a large client base has been formed. Therefore, his colleagues and he can provide private services. Having evaluated the situation in the country and the current requests, the veteran decided to legalize and expand the business.

“We expect that orders will start in the spring, waste collection will increase. Maybe the war will end. More repairs, more household waste will begin,” the veteran says.

Oleksandr’s company now takes out waste from various districts of Kharkiv. They work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. However, the number of his employees decreased because his colleagues were mobilized to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

The main customers are people who started to rebuild their homes after the shelling, as well as small and medium-sized businesses.

Oleksandr will direct the funds received from the Ukrainian Veterans Foundation to:

• purchase of reliable vehicles;

• purchase of containers to attract regular customers;

• rent of a territory with a parking space and a repair box;

• fuel purchase;

• involvement of professional drivers, mechanics and logisticians;

• advertising campaign.

The veteran plans to employ people who defended Ukraine.

“I myself had to leave my hometown, which is still being shelled by the Russians. Rockets have already exploded three times near my house. When we arrived in Odesa, I had problems with settling. On the first night of our move, we sought shelter in the villages. There were many holiday homes, but it was simply impossible to spend the night there. Many of them were closed. That’s why I had to go to Odessa,” Oleksandr says.

He and his family stayed in the village of Karolino-Bugaz.

There they found a location that used to consist of three separate apartments, but they have been combined into one large space. They decided to set up a shelter there.

“There are currently 300 displaced people living in our settlement. The United Territorial Community forbade visiting the beach and the ocean. As a result, it is no longer a resort destination but rather a location to stay temporarily. Up to 6 persons can simultaneously occupy a room at our shelter. All amenities, as required by sanitary standards: bathrooms, a large and spacious kitchen,” says the veteran.

Oleksandr claims that when the government advised Ukrainians to take care of their home’s energy efficiency, he got the idea to equip the building with electricity-generating equipment. “In the shelter, we will install Ukrainian-made blinds on the windows, which can generate electricity from sunlight. This is how we will illuminate the spaces.

Additionally, if a battery is connected, you can build up energy that is sufficient to power an electric fireplace and heat the room” the businessman claims. Before the start of the war, Oleksandr Ruban was a private entrepreneur for ten years.

Before that, he was a huntsman at nature reserve parks. In April 2014 he signed up to join the “Dnipro 1” special purpose battalion as a volunteer. Later on, he enlisted in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, where he spent an additional two years of service.

Oleksandr participated in combat operations close to Popasna and Bakhmut in the anti-terrorist operation zone.

Veteran Volodymyr Skosogorenko has received funds to expand production of processing garlic into paste and fermented black garlic  —  into spices, sauces and single-use stacks.

“Tell me, do you like to chop garlic and then wash that garlic press, clean it with a toothpick? No? In our business, it was important to find the pain point and solve it. We have found it – we free people from washing garlic presses,” Volodymyr says with a smile about his business.

Volodymyr Skosohorenko defended Ukraine in 2014-2015 in the Luhansk region. After discharging the military service, he began to look for himself and started studying psychology in order to help himself and others. In particular, he now volunteers as a psychologist working with wounded military personnel and those who are undergoing rehabilitation.

He decided to go into business because he wanted to earn money… to help combatants with psychological rehabilitation and to fund projects aimed to provide psychological rehabilitation to veterans of the Russian-Ukrainian war and their families.

Volodymyr shares that his own business started for him out of certain interest: how he can apply his combat skills in entrepreneurship? And now he confidently tells everyone that it is necessary to do business with veterans, if only because they want to make the product better, useful and with better quality.

How did it all begin? With his veteran friends, Volodymyr was looking for his business niche for a long time, and then he remembered that he had his two legal hectares of land, which he had leased to a farmer. This farmer grew garlic on that land.

Volodymyr invited him to talk and realized that this was it. So in 2021, he started his own business. His team consisted of several veterans. Later, Volodymyr Skosogorenko began studying the plant in more detail and realized that it was a veteran product.

He says: “There are a lot of hypertensives in the army, and garlic lowers blood pressure and has many other useful properties.”

After February 24th, almost all of Volodymyr’s brothers went to the front, and due to the injuries he received in 2014-2015, he was told to keep home front and create new jobs for them, so that there would be somewhere to return to after the Victory.

Now Volodymyr is dealing with the information front, monitoring the mental state of volunteers, and when everything more or less normalized, he continued to develop the “garlic” business. Volodymyr is currently working on two areas — creating small batches of the garlic paste and spices from fermented black garlic. He says that garlic, like lard, is a superfood.

“What is my dream? I want to see empty packaging from our products in the garbage!”, – shares the veteran. — “And if globally, then after filling Vinnytsia and all of Ukraine with our garlic products, I`m going to enter the international market as well.”

Volodymyr motivates with his thoughts: “In business, the idea is not so important, because there are many ideas floating in the air, but they often disappear, because there was no necessary knowledge for implementation. It is important to understand. Because when we started, we focused on one market, but it didn’t work. Then we changed the vector and everything began working. The main thing is stubbornness.”

After returning from the ATO zone in 2016, veteran Serhiy Svyrydenko founded the Eco Farm “Kozatske Podvirya” in  Ivanopil’a village in Donetsk region.

He raised a herd of goats there and made craft meat delicacies and fragrant cheeses.   But on February 24th, active hostilities came close to his settlement. The market stopped functioning, and the conditions for raising animals became difficult.  

Therefore, the man decided to move a thousand kilometers from home with 150 goats, equipment and machinery.  

Until 2014, Serhiy Svyrydenko had lived in Donetsk. Because of Russian “tourists” and “guest performers”, the situation became very tense, and Serhiy’s whole family went to the country house in the Ivanopillia village, Kostiantyniv district, “for two weeks”, which remained on the controlled territory. And it turned out that they had been staying there for 8 years.  

When Serhii realized that they would not return home in two weeks, he went to the Military Commissariat. He served in the 54th brigade as an artilleryman for a year and a half. He fought on the Svitlodar Arc. After the demobilization, he founded a goat farm in Ivanopillia.  

Serhii Svyridenko says: “What can you do in the village except farming? Everyone has cows, but only a few have goats. Firstly we bought seven ordinary goats. Then we began to learn what and to what. Then we ordered the first elite goat from Germany. And so it all slowly turned around.”  

At the same time, the man started making meat delicacies from pork. In 2017, they received a grant from the NGO “Ukrainian Donetsk Kurkul’” and built a mini-cheese factory at a price of 1 million hryvnias.   Meat delicacies and cheeses were sold in local shops, fairs and online. Things were going well. For example, in 2021, goods were sold for 4.9 million hryvnias. They were preparing to increase the volume of production and sales.  

But on February 24th, a large-scale war began and destroyed all plans. In spring airstrikes occurred in Ivanopillia. Since May, gas has disappeared in the village. And then the Russians shot up the pumping station, so people were also left without water.  

Serhiy’s farm had its own well. He says he could survive in the village on his own, but keeping livestock became increasingly difficult due to water and feed shortages.  

The man no longer believed that everything would pass in “a couple of weeks”, because he had the experience from 2014. Therefore, Serhiy Svyrydenko decided to leave the village for a more peaceful area. It was not easy to transport such a large herd.  

“I had no choice: either the goats will die of hunger in Ivanopillia, or we will move and I will be able to find feed for them. That is why I had been traveling around Ukraine since July, looking for places to move. Somewhere on television there was a program about my farm. Volyn businessman Ivan Bud had watched it. He invited me to his old farm in Volyn,” says the man.  

So, at the beginning of September, Serhiy Svyridenko hired a cattle driver. He loaded equipment, a tractor, and machinery onto the first floor, and 150 goats onto the second floor. He took two employees and products ready for sale and set off.  

The goats have already settled in the new place. Although it was not easy: a different climate, grass. Serhii says that many animals fell ill, six died. But currently the situation has more or less stabilized. Equipping of the farm is still going.

Active volunteering, teaching tactical medicine courses in 2014, participation in war in 2015, a successful start of her own business and war again – this is the story of Victoria Tkach, a veteran entrepreneur who won the #VARTO competition organized by the Ukrainian Veterans Foundation Ministry of Veterans Affairs of Ukraine.

Victoria says, “The history of my own business began in 2018 when, as a volunteer, I began to study at the Kyiv School of Economics in order to return to civilian life and be able to work for myself. After receiving a grant in the amount of 25 thousand hryvnias, we purchased equipment and, having knowledge, how to develop a startup, got on the difficult road of business…”

At the front, Victoria did not eat meat, so her mother sent her dried vegetables and fruits, made with her own hands. That’s how the idea appeared to make nutritious dry goods, which would be useful for those who fight, go to the mountains, and for everyone who needs to take something not so heavy but with high energy value on the road. Initially, the business was to be called “Kus’”, but it was launched as Slice&dry’s.

Currently, her manufacturing deals with the drying fruits, vegetables, mushrooms and meat.

“Our products are popular among people who spend most of their time outside their personal comfort zone, their home, namely athletes, rescuers, military, doctors, police, tourists, climbers, and all of them are united by love for healthy food and respect to their health,” says the veteran.

With the beginning of a full-scale invasion, requests from the military increased 5 times. And therefore the capacity could no longer cope with the requests from customers, so the received money will be used to increase the capacity and expand the staff.

Victoria shares: “For me, this business is an opportunity to have something of my own and give the family another segment that will unite it. I see how my relatives are working on this project, and I am happy. I can see they like it. They talk about our case and joke about it all the time.”

“This is amazing because you can get the veteran business the most money with so little hassle. And it’s in these hard times!”, Oleksandr Kvyatkovsky shares his feelings on the victory in the #VARTO competition from the Ukrainian Veteran Foundation of the Ministry of Veterans Affairs of Ukraine.   

Oleksandr Kvyatkovskyi received funding for the processing of agricultural crops with the help of an agrodrone. He will provide such services for ukrainian farms.

Oleksandr is a combat veteran who served in the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ air reconnaissance in the Donetsk direction from  the first day of the war in 2014. Due to his health, he is currently unable to serve and is instead holding economic front.   

Since Oleksandr worked with drones and UAVs in the army, the idea for his business was actually on the surface. And now, during the agricultural season, he offers services for making maps of fields and using drone photos to assess the condition of crops. This information is needed to put precision agriculture into practice.  

Oleksandr also acknowledges that he couldn’t imagine how important his business would be now, given that many fields have been mined, and they still need to be cultivated and fertilized somehow.  

He explains: “Those farms where fights have taken place try to use tractor tillage as little as possible. It takes more than one year for full demining, the drone is a safer alternative to the tractor: fewer passes of heavy equipment means less chance of hitting a mine or an unexploded shell.”   

His business is funded on the principle of ensuring food security, which is a crucial  area of supporting state security, especially during wartime.

Oleksandr says that: “The use of drones is relevant not only in the military matters, but also in agriculture, because it allows the use of precision farming approaches. This results in significant cost savings, improves the effectiveness of the use of fertilizers and plant protection products, and lowers the expenditures of fuel and lubricants, among other benefits.”  

Oleksandr adds: “Not many people are aware that Ukraine is currently a leader in the development of unmanned technologies for the agricultural industry.  And drones  now are greatly helping to reduce the expenditures, fertilizers used for processing and to speed up the cultivating process, and this saves a lot of resources for farmers and helps to process them in a short time. There are even periods when there is no substitute for such drones. For example, when corn or sunflowers are high, and it is simply impossible to go there with a combine harvester because it will damage the crop.”  

With the help of the Ukrainian Veteran Foundation, Oleksandr will be able to revitalize his company, broaden its range of services, create new jobs, employ veterans, and help farms affected by the war recover faster.