Interview: Dzyga’s Helping Paw
When Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, then 24 year-old Dmytro Zhluktenko decided to quit his programming job in order to volunteer to supply his friends in the military with equipment critical to the fight to stop, and then push back, the Russian military.
A year on from the invasion, Dimko (as his friends know him) has gone from using his own savings to purchase equipment, to having crowdfunded over $840,000 for supplying Ukrainian troops through the Dzyga’s Paw charity he founded and runs. Overt Defense had the opportunity to speak with Dimko at length about his experiences running the charity. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Overt Defense: For those not immediately familiar with you or Dzyga’s Paw, please introduce both yourself and the charity.
Zhluktenko: Basically, I am a regular Ukrainian, ordinary Ukrainian, who had been doing his comfortable IT job right until 24 February, and on the 24th, obviously everyone is aware that Russia started its most recent invasion of Ukraine. And I decided to dedicate 100% of my efforts and my time towards helping my country survive this barbaric invasion.
From the beginning, I’ve been describing how my life looks like on Twitter in English, and that obviously got a bit of attention. In the end, I decided to post information on how I’m helping my friends in the military since I’ve put quite a bit of money into that, and people that were following me were like “hey, how can we help?”, so that grew naturally into me opening a PayPal account and the charity fund with official Ukrainian charity accounts so people were able to donate. Also, I would be able to distribute all that money into equipment to help Ukrainians fight for their land.
The name of the charity is taken from my dog. My dog’s name is Dzyga, and the reason for that is she was always curious about all these parcels that I’ve sent. I was taking pictures of the parcels and their contents in my garden, and she was very interested in sniffing them, prying them, stealing them et cetera et cetera.
And one time, I noticed that her paws were wet and she stepped on a combat shirt. It left a paw footprint on the combat shirt. I thought it would be fun to name a charity fund after the paw of my dog. And that’s how it all started, Dzyga’s Paw.
How are donations from outside Ukraine handled according to Ukrainian law, and has legal compliance impacted fundraising?
At the moment, there are a few unfortunate things for me on that front. The first unfortunate thing is I initially started with PayPal, and PayPal had only just started operations in Ukraine, but only for normal people and not legal entities like a charity. The legacy that I’m trying to deprecate right now is to get rid of this personal PayPal account, because it is not transparent at all and in the beginning I didn’t even think about that, but PayPal turned out to be a very convenient way for people to donate.
With the official charity accounts, I think it’s much more transparent and monitored by the government. I have to send out the reports to the government on what I’ve spent my money on, and there’s actually a lot of bureaucracy to spend the money in the official charity accounts, but I think it’s the right thing to do.
As to how it’s impacted the amount of donations, I think opening the official charity account affected the amounts positively. Now, donations to the charity account are about ten percent of the total income of the charity fund. Which is not enough, obviously, because my dream is that I would be able to move 100 percent of it to the official charity bank accounts, but I’m on the way to replacing the personal PayPal account and becoming more transparent in the eyes of the government and donors.
I did see your transparency initiative and donation tracker on the Dzyga’s Paw website. How have donors responded to the implementation of the tracker?
We didn’t receive any negative feedback, since I think we did it kind of smart by censoring all the names and surnames in the dashboard, and generally people are happy to see their donations happening almost live.
The next stage for the transparency initiative will be to publish all of our expenses, so right now we’re working on a technical solution for that. I have a list in my Excel spreadsheet of all the transactions that have happened since April. And I’m going to publish it in a meaningful and convenient format for people to digest, so they would be aware of where the money has gone. So that’s the next step, and I think it will be greatly appreciated by the donors. For me it’s the right thing to do, because I would demand the same, I would want to know how much the charity fund has gathered and where the money has gone to.
Speaking of where the money goes, where did the idea of splitting donations between any of the units Dzyga’s Paw supports, or to a specific unit or person, come from?
At the moment, we are supporting nearly 10 units, and these are very specific units where our friends serve, and we are 100% sure in these people and that they would appreciate the equipment and put it to good use. At the moment, we are not able to scale further.
How we are picking those people and units is solely based on personal connections, and these are mostly my personal connections, as I am lucky to be an Ukrainian with a lot of friends in the military who are actively fighting in Bakhmut, Kherson region, still, the Zaphoriziya region. So that’s how it goes.
For the units Dzyga’s Paw supports, do they reach out to you, or do you reach out to them based on them being your friends?
I think it’s a mix of both. If they are my friends, we check up on each other from time to time like “how you doing?” As a result of one of these “how you doing?”, that cooperation and support from the charity fund actually grew. That’s kind of cool that I am able to deliver that help or equipment in a direct manner, while with other organizations like, say, the UN, it’s very hard to track down the actual recipients of the help you’ve donated. What I do is much more direct, you can donate a thousand bucks and that converts into two Starlinks, and these two Starlinks go directly to, say, the Skala Battalion fighting in Bakhmut, or the Seneca Company. It’s more direct.
Dzyga’s Paw has multiple efforts going, like the support organization in France and until very recently the drone school. How large is the team?
Actually not that much. As of this moment, I am the only full-time member, as I have decided to dedicate one year of my life solely to this. I wake up with it, I go to sleep with ideas on how to improve. So now we’re at around 20 volunteers who can dedicate a few hours a week or a day of their time towards a good cause. Unfortunately or fortunately, they are all very comfortably employed and happy with their lives, so that is the way they carry out their social responsibility, using their professional skills like analyzing data or building websites to help Ukraine win. And 100% of them are my friends who I know from various parts of my life, most from the IT life.
How does the team stay connected and coordinate with each other on what needs to be done and when?
Basically I use the same approach as I would managing IT teams and departments in my previous life. So the technical part of it is Slack and Asana for task tracking, and we also hold all-hands meetings biweekly with updates from me and other people from the team. Basically the same scheme as I would do in any IT department.
Back on the Starlink topic, Dzyga’s Paw and other charities have mentioned the increased costs of Starlink terminals and subscription costs. How does the charity pay for the subscription costs?
At the moment it’s done solely by personal credit cards. These are people in the military who have received and use these Starlinks, they just put in their cards and gather funds from other members of their units – seven bucks a month isn’t too much. Some others pay for it using charity funds. There is an official process of putting the terminals in the hands of the Ukrainian armed forces, but it’s rather complicated and long. With some units we’ve tried doing this, and the process drags on for over a month, I haven’t had any success yet.
So instead of using the official channels for the time being, you just donate directly to the units you are coordinating with?
Yes, absolutely. There is a huge lack of them from what I have seen and from talking to the ten-something units that we support. By talking to other units that I have met on the frontlines, actually none of them have government (supplied) Starlinks or Elon Musk Starlinks – all of them just pay for them by themselves.
That’s why I reached out – you and other Ukrainian voices on Twitter were saying very different things from what Musk was about Starlink donations and subsidies.
I can definitely understand where he’s coming from, as it’s much better to have a Canadian market than Ukrainian, because in Canada you would have a person install their Starlink on top of a cabin and never move that for three years and pay the subscription, no problem. But in Ukraine, a lot of Starlinks wouldn’t stand even three months because of constant shelling, shell fragments hitting them and destroying them. In the end, they are sent to be serviced where they become donors for other broken Starlinks.
So I can understand where he’s coming from, but at the same time I am kind of confused that there is no procedure for Ukraine or anything, and we are buying Starlinks for the same price as we would in Poland, the Czech Republic or any other country. That’s weird.
Since you mentioned it, how frequently have you seen repaired or replaced terminals that were damaged by Russian action?
Well, there are hundreds of them on the frontlines, and usually military guys dispose of them in Dnipro or other places where local people who aren’t authorized Starlink servicemen repair them, as they’re good with tech equipment and they can figure it out. Which is fun, as in Lozova of the Kharkiv region, there is a guy who has repaired over one hundred Starlink terminals by himself. Which is cool, because I think he is now authorized to work for SpaceX and do all the repairs, as he is an expert now.
What do units do with the cardboard boxes used to package the Starlink terminals once the terminals are in use?
I noticed they are being used as transport cases. Military units move around quite often, either moving your headquarters from one city to another, like after the Kharkiv offensive where the old headquarters were now too far from the frontlines. Or mobile groups whose jobs are to be on the move like drone pilots, you take your Starlink, you drive to your position, you fly the drone with your Starlink, laptop and charging station. You put it all in the bed of your truck and drive back.
More recently you’ve mentioned the effects of the Russian campaign to destroy power and heat generation in Ukrainian cities. You’ve mentioned days where Starlink was your only means of connectivity and EcoFlow inverters (portable power stations) as your only means of power generation. How has this affected Dzyga’s Paw’s operations?
It’s definitely bad for any of the organizations, given that we are IT people and most of our communication is asynchronous. We now get together each evening or each morning to work, as we have our normal day jobs to do. It has affected our work tremendously. Having no internet, having no cellular, having no electricity isn’t cool. At the same time, as we are young, we are kind of coping with it pretty cool.
We are absolutely OK together in one house, being here, have some fun, have dinner, have some wine, so really no issue for all of us. It makes it much easier to have everyone in the same house to cooperate and distribute aid throughout the city (Lviv).
What we also did for Dzyga’s team members as we bought the EcoFlow inverters for the military was to offer them for the same price and conditions to the team. Some team members bought them and paid for them in full, and so we use Dzyga’s Paw’s logistics to let our team members stay connected. Any sort of portable charging station or power station can power your Internet router, and in longer blackouts that would be the main source of charge for your phones, laptops, etc. Which is important in the modern world, unfortunately.
That’s how it is, it’s not cool that Russia is destroying our critical civilian infrastructure like electricity, and at the same time Ukrainians are very smart and they are able to adapt to this new reality. When I go to any city like Lviv or Kharkiv, all I hear on the streets are generators. And these generators power cafes, office buildings, small residential buildings, all the important facilities, so that is cool.
And I’m guessing that the Ukrainian public is doing fairly well in terms of morale despite the campaign?
I think the Ukrainian public was kind of prepared for it already, we understand that the situation will be much worse during the winter, and we just had to be prepared for it.
Have you received anything unusual or been offered something unusual from donors?
Not really, I check everything beforehand and actively reject things I cannot make good use of. If you send me a bunch of network equipment, I have no idea what to do with it, as I’m not that sort of IT guy. If you sent me 100 pieces of body armor, I wouldn’t be able to put it to good use, so I would find someone who is able to do so. I try to stay in the zone of my own expertise so I don’t do anything stupid and use aid inefficiently.
Some people have sent me treats for the dog, which I always accept and she loves them. And it is more of a fun and very cheering part that people are happy to send me dog treats.
How much coordination is there between Dzyga’s Paw and other charities on what sort of aid is best handled by each charity?
Usually, if I’m not an expert on something, I point it out to a different charity that I know is legit and has the required expertise. Let’s say, I have no expertise with bulletproof vests, but I have great expertise in tech stuff like laptops, drones, Starlinks or night vision, so that is the main use case. I’m not trying to own the help or the aid people donate, I’m just happy to give it to whoever feels more comfortable and has the required expertise to handle it and put the aid to good use.
Last question. More recently I’ve noticed some units receiving aid from the charity have received patches with the Dzyga’s Paw logo on them.
That’s the prototypes that we actually did for their design and production, and we got really positive feedback from all the units we brought them to. They treat this like a car racing sponsorship, which is fun and interesting. For me, it’s their way of saying that they are grateful to Ukraine’s defenders.
Are there any plans to make a larger run of them for a fundraiser?
At the moment we are figuring out what would be the best production facilities for those, as there are really a lot of technical difficulties doing all the fonts etc, but we are getting there an quite possibly we would run them somewhere on the website so people can just buy them for fun, or they donate some amount and we would be happy to send them the patches. I also see the interest in them as they are an unique artifact of this war first of all, and it enables you to support the charity fund that you like, that you respect. So, I think, must do. Not sure what point in time though.
Thank you for your time.
Thanks for having me.
Find out more about Dzyga’s Paw at dzygaspaw.com